Locked In
by Terp4Life
Summary: Something has gone terribly wrong on Jane and Kurt's latest undercover op. Set late in season 2 sometime, post 218 but (based on the promo) before 219.
1. Panic

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)**_

Jane woke up with a throbbing headache. _What the hell happened?_ she wondered. As she slowly came to, she noticed that the ground under her felt strangely hard, and as she tried to move, she realized that she hurt all over – and not just a little. When she opened her eyes and saw only blackness, that was when she began to panic.

She struggled to remember something, _anything,_ that would help her figure out what was going on, but her brain felt foggy and sluggish. This felt familiar… all _too_ familiar. Even as she started to shake, she knew that she was having panic attack. Unfortunately, that didn't do anything to stop it from happening.

Her breathing accelerated quickly and she tried to sit up, which only caused her more pain. Her thoughts were racing, not even holding onto one for long enough to be conscious of what it was before the next one had taken its place. In her mind, she saw those eyes that had often haunted her nightmares…

 _Keaton's eyes._

 _Oh my God, did he find me again? Is that what this is?_

Just then, there was a sound of movement nearby, and she scrambled backwards as fast as her aching body would move, until her back hit a wall.

 _Where am I, and what's that noise?_ her mind screamed desperately, suddenly filled with panic. She tried to remain quiet, but she was gasping for breath, making quiet impossible. She had not been this scared since the black site… before she'd managed to turn her mind off, and make herself numb to it all. While she attempted to do so again, it just wasn't working. Not yet.

Kurt regained consciousness only about a minute after Jane, but the details seemed to come back to him faster. Clearly, their covers had been blown on their latest undercover op. He tried to remember what had happened, but the last thing he could recall was standing in front of a group of five or six very large men with very large guns, watching one of them slap Jane across the face, _hard,_ with… what had he used, anyway? It hadn't been his hand, but something metal.

 _God, that must have hurt._

Speaking of which… _Where was Jane?_

Then, as his thoughts finally cleared for a second, he heard something. Attempting to sit up, he recognized it as a sudden, fast rustling, and then the sound of someone breathing rapidly… too rapidly. As if they were panicking.

 _Please, be Jane,_ he thought.

"Jane?" he asked hesitantly, afraid of what he would do if she _wasn't_ there with him. He could only imagine what horrible things might have happened to her if… _No, find out first, before you panic,_ he told himself.

There was a pause, a choked sob, and then a voice that sounded far too small and panicked to belong to the woman he knew as practically indestructible. "Kurt?"

Her rapid breathing continued despite the sound of relief in her voice. No, he swore she was actually breathing faster and harder now than less than a minute before.

 _She's probably having flashbacks of the black site,_ he realized, already moving forward slowly, walking on his knees in the direction of her breathing. "Yeah, it's me," he said, hating how scared she sounded. He found the wall just to the left of her before he actually found her, and then moved his fingers slowly and carefully along it until he located her.

"Hey," he said, his right hand coming to rest on her right arm, noticing that he didn't feel any fabric, only skin, until he reached her shoulder. This was because, he noted with relief, she was wearing one of her trademark tank tops. He'd felt her shiver slightly from his touch, and he rested his hand on her shoulder for a second. "Sorry," he whispered, mistaking her shiver for wincing.

"No," she said with some effort, smiling just a tiny bit for a second at his concern, despite how terrified she felt, "it didn't hurt." _The opposite, actually,_ she thought, but decided not to say so out loud.

His hand squeezed her shoulder before it moved up through empty space, finding her chin almost immediately and tracing along the bottom of her jawline around her left cheek. Her face was pointed away from him and the slight movement he felt matched exactly with the sounds of heavy breathing coming from her direction. Pressing lightly on her cheek with his index finger, he turned it so that it faced him – even though they couldn't actually see each other – then held his hand up against the side of her face, moving this thumb back and forth in what he hoped was a soothing motion. This wasn't the kind of thing he would normally do, of course, but this wasn't exactly a normal circumstance, either. Touch had always worked to calm her down in the past, and that was all he could think of just then.

His fingers were light against her cheek, and even though she registered his touch, it didn't stop her from shaking. His left hand moved up her right arm, jumped to her cheek and then up the right side of her face, as his other hand had done on her left cheek. The right side of her face, he quickly noticed, felt suspiciously swollen.

She flinched against his touch on that side, and he quickly moved his fingers back, past her hairline but not surrendering the contact completely. "Sorry," he whispered. "That's where that guy hit you, wasn't it?" She didn't speak, but he felt her head nod between his hands. His left thumb felt something slightly sticky on her temple, and he felt her flinch again. "Hey, hang on," said, trying to get her to stay still, "I think you're bleeding."

"I'm fine," she whispered, her voice shaking almost uncontrollably.

She couldn't see it, but he shook his head at her, feeling his chest constrict with concern _for_ her, and frustration _with_ her and her complete disregard for her own well-being.

"Jane, you are _so_ far from okay…" he whispered, shaking his head at her. Then, thinking quickly, he leaned towards her and said, "I'm going to need my hands for a second, okay? I'm not moving… I'm right here…" His left hand fell from the side of her head, then slid lightly down her arm, his fingertips just skimming her skin, down to her right hand. Taking her hand in his, he placed it on the cotton of the t-shirt he was wearing, over his heart. He knew that what he had to do – withdrawing from her – was going to make her nervous, but he didn't have a choice, so he decided to get it over with as quickly as he could.

Hesitantly, he removed his hands from her, immediately feeling her gasp, the tension in her traveling through her hand to his chest. "Jane, talk to me," he said as he reached awkwardly for the short sleeve on his left shoulder, attempting to tug at it hard enough to rip it.

"I… I can't…" she stammered, and he felt momentarily helpless. What he wouldn't do to be able to do _something_ to fix this.

 _One thing at a time,_ he told himself. First, get the bleeding on her temple under control. Then, check for any other injuries. After that… play it by ear.

"We're going to be fine, Jane," he said soothingly as he tugged hard at his sleeve, which finally began to rip. "Just… hang on a second…" He pulled the sleeve the rest of the way off, breaking the last of the seam. Folding the small piece of cloth, he held it in his left hand as he tried to reorient himself to where she was in relation to him. His hands moved slowly in the direction he expected to find her, finding her shoulders just where he'd guessed.

His right hand remained on her left shoulder. He worried about what other injuries she might have, and promised himself he would get to that shortly. His left hand went back up along her cheek until his fingers grazed her temple, once again finding the spot that felt sticky.

"Here," he told her pressing it against her temple gently, feeling her wince. "Hold this right there for a while." He felt her shift, felt her hand leave his chest reluctantly, and seconds later, felt her fingers brush against his on the makeshift washcloth that he'd just made out of the sleeve of his shirt. He moved his fingers out of the way slightly, so that she could put hers there, letting his fingers sit over hers for a few seconds before moving them away.

Meanwhile, Jane still sounded like she was hyperventilating, albeit maybe a little bit less than she had been. "What else hurts?" he asked her quietly.

She was trying, but it was so hard to concentrate on the sound of his voice – there were so many other noises in her head vying for her attention, and all the while she kept seeing Keaton's eyes… it was almost as though they were haunting her. Every time she saw them in the darkness, as she did again just then, she gasped slightly and her panic increased, destroying whatever progress she had made.

"Jane," he said evenly, still trying to get her attention. Both of his hands were on her shoulders now, his thumbs fanning back and forth across the ends of her collarbone in an attempt to sooth her nerves. "You need to tell me what else hurts," he told her seriously. When she didn't answer, he moved his hands to the back of her neck, trying to get her attention back on him. His voice dropped slightly when he added, less seriously, "And if you tell me you're fine again, I'm going to have to check for injuries myself."

Of course, the only way he could tell that she hadn't been injured when they had not one single beam of light, if she wouldn't tell him one way or the other, would be to carefully move his hands over her. This was a very… _strange_ thing for him to be threatening, he realized. It's not as though he would have made the same threat – offer? – to anyone else on the team… And technically, he was her boss… And yet at the same time, this was _Jane_ , and she was the exception to everything, and always had been. He simply _had_ to know that she was okay.

 _As much as you might like that,_ she told herself, _it sounds like something for another time… So you'd better tell him what hurts._

He heard her sigh heavily in between breaths, followed by several more, quick gulps of air as she struggled to get control of her voice enough to use it. Then she finally replied slowly, "My head feels like it's going to explode, my side stings, I think I may have broken ankle, and I feel like I may have been hit by a truck… just all over." As though as soon as she finished talking, she began breathing hard again.

"Okay," he replied, keeping his voice as calm as possible and glad to see that she was at least telling him what hurt. "So let's talk about where your side hurts."

"It's fine, Kurt," she replied. "I'm fine." She was still breathing heavily,

"Will you stop saying that?" he asked her with a sigh. "Jane, I know exactly what this reminds you of, and I know that you didn't like enclosed spaces _before_ you went there…" He paused, waiting to see if she would try to deny the truth of his words – which she didn't. "I know this is scary, but you're not alone, okay? This is not the same as that time…"

Even though it made no difference, her eyes closed as she tried to block a rush of emotion caused by his words. She was immensely grateful that she wasn't there alone, because if she had been… she didn't know what she would have done. As it was, this was bad enough. Nodding, though he couldn't see it, she was unable to get her voice to work just then.

"Now tell me where your side hurts," he insisted gently. "Which side, first of all?"

There was a pause, and he could feel her fighting to get control of her breathing once again. "My left," she told him in a small voice. His right hand immediately skimmed down her arm until it reached her waist, then using only the tips of his fingers, his hand stopped.

"Where?" he asked. He sensed hesitation before he felt her shift, bringing her hand up to meet his and brushing back the bottom of her shirt and moving an inch further in, towards her stomach, to reveal skin that, he couldn't help notice, was far softer than he had expected.

"There," she told him, trying to keep from wincing as he touched the area that hurt so much, moving her hand back slightly for the inspection that she knew he was about to occur. "I think I remember someone kicking me there. It… really stings."

She could hear him suck in air as he digested this information, and she knew, because she knew how protective he could be when it came to her, that he was angry that someone would _kick_ her. His fingers moved gently over the patch of skin and a little bit around it, to try to tell a difference, and she tried to remain as still as she could despite how much it hurt.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, feeling her flinch and then moving his hand back out onto the cotton of her shirt, settling it low on her waist, just above her hip. "No broken skin there, thank goodness. Hopefully no internal damage…" He noticed that the sound of her breathing wasn't quite as heavy as it had been, but she was still not at all in a good place. It seemed doubtful that she would be okay until they managed to get themselves out of wherever they were being kept. And even after that… he hated to think how this experience was going to stay with her. But that was a problem to be dealt with after he assessed her injuries.

Trying to keep his mind focused on making sure she was physically alright first and foremost, and trying not to worry about the other things, most of which were out of his control, he asked, "Which ankle?"

"My left as well," she replied quietly. Moving around to the side of her, so that he was almost sitting against the wall beside her, but staying as much within arms' reach of her as possible so that she knew he was still there, he found her leg and ran both hands down it to where her boots began. Unlacing that one carefully, he pulled it off slowly, laying it against the wall where he'd have an easier time finding it again, and exposing her ankle. He could tell without being able to see it that it was quite swollen, so if it wasn't broken, it was definitely a bad sprain. Once again, he heard her suck in her breath when he touched it.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again.

There was a choked sob from her direction, as if she was trying to stop the noise from escaping her, but failing. Her breaths started coming harder and faster again, and he set down her foot carefully, moving back around to the front of her.

She felt him moving around in front of her, so she crossed her legs to get them out of his way, keeping her injured ankle on top of her opposing knee. Though she couldn't stop shaking, it helped to know that he was there.

Once again, his hands found her arms, sliding back up to her shoulders and then hesitating only a second before moving to the back of her neck, the tips of his middle fingers barely grazing the skin before his fingers were in her hair. His fingers pressed just a little harder, now, massaging her scalp slightly in what he hoped would be both distracting enough to get her attention and possibly helpful to the headache she'd said she had.

"Jane," he said, kneeling in front of her and leaning forward so that his forehead just barely touched hers, "Keep breathing."

It wasn't lost on her that that was the same thing he'd told her so long ago, but she couldn't bring herself to respond beyond a hitch of her breath as she fought to calm herself down once again. She hated that she felt so weak, that she seemed to have no control of herself or of her emotions here, in this place… but it was _far_ too close to being back at the black site, and it was all she could do not to break down completely, even with Kurt right there in front of her.

The sensation of his hands in her hair, working against her scalp gently, was helping her to cope with her headache, and the fact that he maintained contact with her, so close in front of him, did help her a little to calm her down. Her right hand still held the cloth against her temple, but her left hand moved in his direction as she tried to make him more real, there in front of her, and when she found him, she wrapped her arm around his waist – hesitantly at first, and then tighter.

"It's okay," he mumbled, knowing that at any second, their situation could go from bad – which it was, when he thought about the reality of it – to much, much worse. He needed to figure out what was going on, but he also needed to keep Jane calm. It was going to be a balancing act, that much was for sure. At those two words, he felt her arm tighten around him, and he turned his face slightly to lean his right temple against her forehead so that he could brush his nose against her right hand, which was holding the makeshift cloth of his t-shirt sleeve against her right temple.

He knew better to promise her anything just then. The closest he dared come to a promise that they would be okay was exactly what he'd said. At that second, they weren't great, considering all of Jane's injuries and the fact that clearly, someone had locked them inside of something, but they were _okay_. After all, it could have been _worse_. They were both alive, and they had been thrown into whatever this place was _together_. He shuddered to think what it would have been like for her if she'd been in there alone. This was bad enough.

Eventually his arms began feeling heavy from holding them up so long. Slowly, he dropped them back down to her shoulders, but this time he wound them around her upper back, holding on securely. She leaned forward and laid her head on his right shoulder, keeping her injured temple facing up, so that she was facing into his neck, though she couldn't see it. He felt her breath tickle the skin there, and was surprised to find that it comforted him. If nothing else, he knew that she was still breathing, and that her breathing had slowed down somewhat, which was encouraging, too.

With no idea how much time they'd been there already – wherever they were – after they'd sat there long enough that Jane seemed to have calmed down, Kurt knew that he needed to find out more about this room they were in – if it was big enough to be called a room. After all, odds were that eventually, someone would be back for them. He needed to know as much as he could about what they were dealing with.

Leaning back from Jane slightly, he felt her immediately hold on tighter. Smiling sadly at her in the dark, even though she couldn't see it, he couldn't help but wish he didn't have to move, that he would have loved to have stayed exactly where he was.

 _Get out of this first,_ he told himself. _There's time for that later._

 _But isn't that what you always think?_ the voice in his head asked. _That the time isn't right? That there will be a better one._

 _Maybe, but it's even_ _ **less**_ _right just now,_ he grumbled in his head.

"Hey, it's okay," he told her quietly. After a pause, he added, "I need to stand up and check the size of this room, so I have a better idea what we're dealing with. Eventually, someone's going to come back for us, and I want us to be prepared."

Of course, there was no _guarantee_ that someone would come back for them, and in a way, there was also no guarantee that someone coming back for them would be a good thing… They both knew these things, so there was no sense in saying them out loud. It was simply too many hypotheticals, none of which they had any control over.

He felt her right arm wrap around his left side, and he knew that she'd abandoned the idea of holding the cloth on her temple. Her arms tightened around him, and he had to smile despite himself, and despite the fact that he knew how scared she was. He couldn't help it. The feeling that it gave him that she leaned into him for comfort… at that moment he felt guilty for enjoying it, but he did, more than a little bit. Turning his head back to press his forehead against hers, he then lifted his head slightly, just enough to press a light kiss to the spot where his forehead had just been.

There was no way he would ever have acted like this with anyone else, he realized as he kissed her forehead, not even if he'd been in this situation with Zapata or Patterson and they'd been just as scared as Jane was just then – not even if it was for exactly the same reasons. He'd been denying a lot of things to himself for a long time. He'd begun to realize it when Jane had been dating Oliver, but he'd still tried to tell himself that that feeling of jealousy was nothing. Now, suddenly, everything was becoming very clear to him. It seemed ironic, of course, since he couldn't see anything _else_ , and now suddenly his feelings for Jane seemed blindingly clear.

"I'm not leaving you," he whispered, "I promise, okay? I just need to know how big this room is, and then I'll be right back here. Alright?" She nodded slowly, but he could feel the tension in her everywhere, and he knew that she was trying to force herself to be alright when she didn't feel it whatsoever.

 _It's okay,_ she told herself. _It's okay._ She felt what little calm she had in her slipping, and her breathing quickly began to accelerate again as Keaton's eyes flashed in front of her eyes once again.

 _God, I hate this,_ he thought as he pulled away from her. He noticed that she didn't drop her arms from his sides until he forced himself to move back, away from her, and she had no other choice.

Pulling her legs up in front of her, hugging her knees to her tightly and trying to keep from leaning against her injured ankle, she made herself as compact as possible, feeling the distinct and increasingly panicked urge to curl up into a tiny ball. She wanted to shut out the world, to escape her thoughts – even though she knew that it wouldn't work.

Hating every second of it, he moved back, away from her, finding the wall with his hands and moving to the left from where he'd started. He moved only another two feet or so before finding a corner. "Here's the corner," he told her, trying to talk as much as he could to alleviate her fears at least a little. Stretching his hands up as high as he could, he found that he could just barely feel the ceiling with the tips of his fingers. Lowering himself back down, then turning at a ninety degree angle and moving along the next wall, it was only a few seconds before he found a door – locked, as he expected.

"There's a door here, Jane," he told her. "It's locked, of course…" He heard her heavy sigh, followed by the sound of her panicked breathing. "Hey, shhhhh… don't do that. I'm right over here, okay?" he said, trying to keep the words flowing when really, there was nothing to say.

Maybe four feet from the first corner, he found another one, and his theory of their being in some kind of walk-in closet began to seem more and more possible. "I found the next corner, Jane," he told her. No reply this time, just continued heavy breathing. "Hang in there, okay? I'm right here." Now he was working his way down the wall opposite the one she was sitting against, moving slowly and methodically to try to find out as much as he could. But the wall appeared to be simply a long, flat piece of drywall, nothing out of the ordinary.

As he moved, he could hear that she sounded increasingly frantic, which made him move faster. Reaching the next corner, he continued to narrate his progress. "Here's the next corner, so I'd guess that you're sitting just short of the middle of that wall, the longer side," he told her. Reaching the next corner quickly, he said, "Okay, last corner and now I'm back the wall you're on." He slowed down slightly, so that he didn't accidentally kick her. "If I had to guess, I'd say from the size that this is a walk in closet. It seems to be about six feet by four feet."

The sounds of hyperventilating were right beside him when his leg brushed carefully against her shoulder. She jumped back in surprise, despite the fact that he'd been talking to her that whole time and she had an approximate idea where he had been. He grimaced, feeling her move quickly away from him, kneeling down and extending his hands carefully along the ground to find out how far she'd just moved.

"Jane, it's okay," he murmured, "It's just me." There was no response, only more rapid breathing. "Move back over here…" He heard her shift slowly, and tense up in fear for a second when one of his hands found her leg. "Okay, there you are," he said soothingly. The difference was almost immediate, as he felt her begin to relax.

"Now let's try this," he said. Keeping his hand on her leg, he turned himself around so that his back was against the wall that she'd been leaning against, his legs out in front of him with his knees bent. Putting his right leg down so that it was out of the way, he tugged on her slightly, trying to get her to move around closer to him. He knew that there would probably be no calming her down completely as long as they were inside that tiny space, but he was going to try his best.

"Move over here, towards me, okay? Turn around this way…" He managed to get her to sit in front of him, turning so that her back was against his chest. His arms wound all the way around her shoulders in a tight hug as he held onto her, leaning his head down beside hers so that his mouth was near her right ear.

Even though she wasn't as tense as she had been, now she was shaking. "Sssshhh," he murmured in her ear. Without even realizing it, he started rocking slightly from one side to another in another attempt to calm her. He had no experience with this kind of thing but, as often seemed to happen with Jane, and only Jane, he just did what felt like the right thing, and it seemed to work.

"Now that we know what kind of space we're dealing with, we should listen and try to figure out what's going on outside, okay?" It had been a long time since the last time they'd been this close – since the last time they kissed. That felt like a thousand years ago, in a lot of ways. But sitting and holding onto her like this, he couldn't help but wonder why in the world it hadn't happened again since then. Of course, he _knew_ why, but… Somehow none of those reasons seemed valid when at that moment. After all, how could _anything_ be more important that Jane?

"The best part of _that_ is that we can just sit here quietly, just like this, and listen," he told her, still speaking right into her ear and leaning his cheek against hers. He felt her nod, her cheek moving against his scruffy one, and he noticed that her breathing had mostly settled down again, so that she now sounded only slightly terrified, instead of full-on panicked. It was progress, he supposed.

"Kurt," he heard her whisper after a few minutes of quiet, during which she'd begun to let herself relax against him. It would be a lie if he said that he didn't enjoy sitting there with her so close, despite the harrowing situation in which they found themselves. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head without moving it off her cheek, so that she could feel it. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Jane," he said without a second thought. After all, what could she possibly think was her fault?

But she shook her head. "No, I _do_ ," she whispered. And then, in a voice that he could hear breaking, she added, "So many things…"

"Hey, none of that," he whispered back. "On the contrary… if not for Shepherd and Sandstorm and Remi…" She noticed that he mentioned Remi as a person who was just as separate from her as Shepherd was, and she loved him for it. "…and my dad… _Taylor_ … and all of the unthinkably horrible things in our lives, we might not be where we are right this second – I mean, I'm not crazy about the part where we're locked in a closet – but you and I…" He shook his head against her, to be sure that she could feel it. "I can't regret any of it. Which sounds crazy, I know. And I know… we have no idea what's going to happen – though I believe that our team's going to find us, and you should, too. The thing is, when I get an excuse to sit here with you like this… it's hard to have any regrets."

Her head shook against his immediately. "Kurt, they could be holding us for _ransom_ ," Jane said in exasperation. "They might kill us." It was true, he knew, and she said it chillingly matter-of-factly… Once again he wished that he could look into her eyes. They'd always been able to say so much to each other without uttering a word.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," he said with more confidence than he felt. What she'd said was absolutely the truth – they were at the mercy of a group of criminals – people who were known not to have any. And yet, he felt as though they'd gotten out of tighter spots before.

She squeezed her eyes shut and then it was _her_ turn to shake her head at _him_. It was hard not to be exasperated with him. Did he not understand how _serious_ this was?

"Shhhh," he whispered into her ear again. "We're allowed to listen for noise out there to try to figure out what's going on, but that's it. Other than that, focus on this. Right here. You and me. Not the size of the room, not where the room is, not what may or may not happen beyond what we know for sure – which is currently nothing – nothing else. Okay? Just us." He moved his cheek slightly so that he could kiss hers, about an inch in front of her ear, then moved back, without breaking the contact between their cheeks.

He could hear – and feel, for that matter – her breathing become uneven, and he hoped she wasn't going to cry. There was nothing that he hated more then when she cried. Pulling her tighter, he felt her shift, turning around in his arms so that she could lay her head against his chest, her legs curled up together on one side of her.

She could now hear the rhythmic _thump-thump_ of his heart, and she tried to focus on that, along with the feeling of his arms around her.

 _Just us_ , she repeated over and over to herself. _Just us_.

Just then, there was a loud noise outside the door – the sound of another door slamming and several loud voices. She felt his arms tighten around her as she became rigid with terror. They were both frozen in place, listening. One voice was shouting something loud and angry to another, going on and on. Something about _four o'clock_ and _the boss_ and _the plan_ , as best she could make out. Then there was the sound of a door slamming once again, and silence.

She didn't relax at all, even after the door slammed and the voices could no longer be heard, he noticed, and he didn't loosen his hold on her even a little. If anything, he held onto her just a little tighter. Leaning his face down against the top of her head, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"It's okay," he whispered into her hair. It might not be, they both knew, but for the moment, they were still alive, and they were together. That would have to do for now.


	2. First

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)**_

The minutes stretched out in silence, punctuated only by Jane's heart, which beat wildly, and her breathing, which gave away just how terrified she was. Despite the fact that Kurt had his arms wrapped tightly around her, and that the sound of voices had disappeared almost as quickly as they had come, and that they hadn't heard anything since then, she did not relax even a little bit.

He knew that he had to do something to calm her down, that he at least had to _try._ "Jane," he whispered. "Do you want to hear a story?" It may have seemed like a strange question, but he was hoping it would distract her. When she nodded slightly against him, his face still in her hair, he lifted his head just enough to turn it, resting his cheek against her hair instead.

"Okay, so I know you haven't heard this one, because I don't think I've ever told _anyone_ … Sarah may or may not have heard about it, but _I_ didn't tell her, so I doubt it…" he mused out loud. He couldn't see it, but Jane couldn't help but feel her breath catch in her chest for a second. Kurt Weller was going to tell her something that he'd never told anyone? She knew him well enough to know what a big deal it was for him to open up to anyone – namely because he just _didn't._ She already felt special just at the thought that he would even _consider_ telling her anything so personal to him. Without her even realizing it, there was a hint of a smile on her lips.

"My favorite memory from when I was a kid was the day before my tenth birthday. It was a Saturday. Everything seemed normal enough – my dad was sleeping off whatever he'd had to drink the night before, and Sarah had made me breakfast, because she loved to cook… despite how terrible she was at it, even back then. It was horrible, of course, but she insisted that it was my _day-before-my-birthday breakfast_ ," he said with a chuckle. "She tried, at least."

Jane's mind went back to that night at Kurt's apartment, only a few days after they'd met. If she was remembering correctly, that was the first time she'd met Sarah and Sawyer. Sarah had called her Taylor, and Sawyer had asked her who she was and then, a minute later, where she had gone. And Kurt… well, he hadn't said anything specific, but she could just feel it. They'd just found out that she was Taylor – that they'd _thought_ that she had been Taylor – and twenty-five years of hoping and wishing was staring at her in the face whenever he looked at her. He didn't realize it, but it had just been too much. After all, how could she live up to those kinds of expectations?

Flinching slightly inside, she remembered that she'd gone into panic mode and abruptly jumped up from the table, fleeing from the apartment, down the hall to the elevator. Kurt's face when he'd caught up to her there had been so worried, and just as desperate as she had _felt_ that night. Looking back… well, it all seemed so simple now by comparison. Now knowing everything that would come next, she wished that she had let herself hang onto that simplicity for a while longer. Of course, that was easy to say _now_ , but still…

She felt a twinge inside her at the bittersweet memory, and wondered if she would ever get that chance again. _No, I can't go there_ , she reminded herself. Because even assuming they could get out of where they were now, alive, she'd long since stopped hoping that they could have another chance, that he would let her in the way he'd done at first, so easily. It had all become too complicated. The two of them… once upon a time she'd thought that the baggage between them made it work, but now… now it felt like no matter how much she had once wanted it to, maybe it had been just that – something she'd believed in because she'd wanted it, and nothing more. An idea that she'd clung to because it was all she had, no matter how unrealistic. Or maybe just because she hadn't know any better at the time.

Or at least, that was what she'd thought until recently. After she'd stopped seeing – er, been _dumped by_ – Oliver, she'd realized in surprise that she didn't really miss him. _Oliver_ , that is. She missed the companionship, the feeling of having someone, all the good feelings that she'd felt when they'd been dating, yes… But she didn't actually miss _him_. Which made her wonder… Was that normal?

"Poor Sarah," Jane mumbled in reply, and Kurt took that as a very good sign. She was hearing him, even if she was still completely rigid. Her breathing had slowed down just a little once again, and if it was possible, he swore she shifted closer to him. Despite the circumstances, that made him smile.

"Poor _me,_ I had to pretend I liked it!" he insisted, his voice not going above a whisper. "So anyway, it was probably only nine o'clock in the morning when Taylor showed up… which was actually pretty late for her on the weekend. Her mom always had to be at work early, and as soon as she left, Taylor was at my door. She never did like being home alone."

He tried to keep his tone light, but it wasn't easy. Talking about Taylor wasn't something he did voluntarily. His stories of her were something that most of the time, as special as they were to him, he didn't even want to recall them himself, much less tell them to anyone else. But as sad as they made him, they also made him happy in a bittersweet way, and if there was anyone for whom he would expose the vulnerable side of himself, it was Jane.

He paused to determine the effect of his story on her so far. After all, Taylor was a sensitive subject not just for him, but also for her. Maybe not in the same way, of course, but with nearly equal intensity. When it came down to it, however, he couldn't imagine that hearing about Taylor now, in these circumstances, could make her feel worse than she already did… and when she didn't seem to flinch, he decided it was safe to go on.

"She was so lucky to have you," Jane whispered before he had a chance to continue, feeling he softness of his shirt against her cheek, hearing his heartbeat in her ear, and wishing that _she_ could have been a better friend to him… Or a better… _whatever_ it was that they were. He had deserved more. Someone more like Taylor, who could never have betrayed him the way she had. Even now, after things had normalized between them again, she still felt this regret, and she imagined that she probably always would.

He didn't often think of Taylor as lucky, all things considered, but he knew how Jane meant it. As messed up as his childhood had been, he felt as though for as long as he could remember, he'd always just been trying to get by. His best had never felt good enough, for anything or anyone. After all, his mom had left years before that, and whether that had had anything to do with him or not, he'd always internalized it as if it had. The idea that Taylor had been lucky to have had him was a foreign concept to him. No, if anyone had been lucky, he had been lucky to have her – a friend so devoted to him that she would have done _anything_ for him. Somehow, he couldn't see that the same applied to him, that he would have done anything for her, as well, and that that was what Jane was talking about.

He overlooked her comment, feeling her words sting in his chest as his childhood insecurities reared themselves up again. The subject of Taylor could do that to him. As successful and relatively secure of an adult that he may be – albeit slightly tortured by his past, but who wasn't, really? – the subject of Taylor had always been able to make him feel just as small and guilty as he had after she'd first disappeared. It was impossible to think that she'd been lucky to have him. After all, he'd let the unthinkable happen to her when he was supposed to be protecting her.

"So she showed up with a _huge_ grin on her face, peeking through my back door before just letting herself in, as usual," he continued smiling slightly at the memory of the five year old girl who had changed his life so completely. "And she begged me to come out in the back yard, to go to our hiding place in the woods. Of course, Sarah had no interest in that. She tried to get me to watch a movie with her, but she didn't have a chance. I always preferred to go outside, and so did Taylor."

He paused, seeing that day so clearly in his mind that it took his breath away. He hadn't thought about it in a very, very long time. It wasn't easy to think about these memories of her, and he didn't indulge in it very often. Besides, these days he spent most of his waking hours trying to save the world, so there was little time left for reminiscing about anything.

"She had her backpack on," he remembered aloud, "Care Bears, I think… maybe…? They're these colorful bear toys with a big white patch on their stomach, and each of them had a different picture in the middle of the white patch. They were a big deal back then. It wasn't a surprise, because she _loved_ to wear that backpack. Anywhere she went that year, whether there was actually anything in it or not, she was had it on… So we spent the morning back in the woods, in our hiding spot in the trees. The weather was perfect, much better than usual at that time of year," he remembered. "And when I said we should head back for lunch, she just shook her head, the biggest grin on her face, and reached into her backpack. She pulled out two _very_ much smashed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They had _obviously_ been made by a five year old, but even so…"

His voice trailed off as he remembered the look on Taylor's face, how proud she'd been when she'd pulled out those sandwiches, handing him one and taking out one for herself. "She had juice boxes, too, and she told me that she'd been planning this birthday picnic for a long time." He paused, and wondered if maybe he shouldn't have told this story in the first place, because he was feeling a little light-headed, and he wasn't sure he could continue. Just then, she shifted against him, and he realized for the first time that she had begun to relax. Suddenly, he was grounded again. That was all the encouragement he needed.

"After we'd eaten, and I'd finally convinced her that my fingers were _not_ sticky from the sandwiches – which was funny because that was what I usually gave _her_ a hard time with after we ate anything remotely sticky – she took one more thing out of her backpack. It was a picture that she'd painted – it must have been at school, because the paper was heavy duty, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't any of that in her house, or my house for that matter… It was a little bit crumpled from being in her backpack, but it was…" He took a breath, remembering once again. "It was a rainbow, with two tiny little stick people underneath. I asked her who the people were, and she said, 'That's you and me, silly!'" He couldn't help but smile at the memory, even as he felt his heart constrict with pain.

"She grinned at me for a second, and then said, 'Happy birthday, Kurt. I wanted to give you your birthday present early, so I could be the first one.' She looked so proud of herself, and then she hugged me harder than I thought it was possible for a five year old to hug anyone, ever." He remembered the crushing hug that had accompanied her words, and he had the sudden sensation of falling. _This_ was why he didn't let himself do this, didn't indulge in reliving these memories. This feeling that was like his world was crumbling around him _again_ , after all this time. It was funny how it could do that – that even after so many years and so many repetitions, he could still feel so much like it was all falling apart.

There was a change in his breathing then. She noticed that it became faster and shallower, and she could only imagine how much that memory was hurting him. Their connection was so strong, she felt a twinge in her own chest just thinking about it, and instinctively she tightened her arms around him.

He felt himself coming back from wherever he'd temporarily gone, those few seconds when emotion had completely overtaken him, and noticed that Jane was squeezing him tightly. The twinge in his heart changed then, becoming more of a flood of emotion… Not just any emotion, either, though he wasn't quite sure how to put a name on it. It was the same one he felt whenever he thought of Jane, just far more intense.

 _You know what it is,_ the voice in his head told him. _Stop denying it._

"What happened to it?" she asked, breaking into his thoughts. He'd almost forgotten that he was telling her the story, because it had successfully distracted _him_ as well as it had her.

"I had it out on a shelf in my room for a long time," he said, sadness creeping into his voice. "Eventually, after a few years, it was just too hard to look at… so I put it away." He felt her head nod underneath his.

"But you still have it?" she asked, not quite sure why she was as interested as she was. Suddenly it just felt important to her that he still had the painting.

"Yeah," he said, remembering putting it away carefully in a box of other things that were equally special and yet heartbreaking to him.

"Good," she whispered, feeling better just knowing that nothing had happened to it, though she didn't know why.

"I'll show it to you, next time we're at my place," he promised. He felt her stiffen slightly at those last words, and he knew why. After all, they didn't know if they would get that chance – though of course, he reminded himself, they never knew for sure that they would get out of any of the tight spots that they got into, and so far, they always had. But he knew that that was what she was thinking, so he added, "We're going to get out of here, Jane. Okay?"

"You don't know that," she said in a small voice.

"I don't know _how_ ," he said, "but I know that we will." He could feel her shaking her head again, and he leaned down and kissed the top of it, in her hair. Almost immediately, he felt her relax again, though her arms pulled more tightly around him.

She surprised him then. "I have twofavorite memories," she whispered, her cheek still against his chest. "You're in both of them." It hadn't been her intention to say any of those words out loud, they had simply slipped out as quickly as they'd come into her mind.

"Oh, yeah?" he asked curiously. He hadn't expected her to reciprocate, and now he was more than a little bit curious. But he was even more surprised when she lifted her head off of him and sat back until his arms fell from around her shoulders, and he wasn't sure exactly where she was. For a second he wondered if he should be worried, until he felt her hands land tentatively on his knees, which were still in the air on either side of him.

 _She must be pretty distracted by whatever she's thinking about to be comfortable enough to move that far away, here of all places,_ he mused.

Her two favorite memories weren't something she'd been planning to share with him, and even though she knew that he couldn't see how flustered she'd just gotten, she felt the momentary need to withdraw. Considering the darkness, she didn't move far away. No, she knew that she was still sitting between his knees. Now kneeling in front of him, she realized that in those few seconds she'd already begun to miss the contact with him, more so than usual because of the darkness surrounding her. She moved one hand, and then the other, slowly through space until they each found his knees, on either side of her. Still kneeling, she slid herself a little closer to him to close the large distance that she herself had suddenly created.

He sensed her hesitation, both when her hands came to rest on his knees, and from the fact that she remained quiet. After all, he knew her pretty well.

"You don't have to tell me," he told her sincerely, which made her smile into the darkness. Once again, emotion swelled in her and suddenly she _wanted_ to tell him… And yet even so, she couldn't bring herself to actually do it.

"But am I allowed to guess?" he asked. She swore that she could hear the grin on his face as he sat forward, covering her hands with his own where they still sat on his knees and then slowly running his hands up along her bare arms to her elbows, and then back, several times.

"Um… sure," she replied hesitantly, her smile of amusement evident even in her voice.

"Okay, then, let's see…" he said, trying to think of an appropriately curious question. "Would I remember either of these times?"

He heard her chuckle softly to herself, and then she replied, "Well, I like to think so…" It was almost as though he could hear her blushing, which was something that he'd never even known was possible.

"Hmmm… Interesting," he said, wondering if the guess that was already forming in his head was correct. Leaning further forward slowly, inch by inch, he could suddenly feel her breath just in front of him, and he knew that he was close.

"Was anyone else there?" he asked, leaning forward just a little more, what felt like painfully slowly as he listened for her breathing. He was trying to line things up just right…

"Well, there wasn't supposed to be…" Jane replied softly. Once again, he swore he could hear the expression on her face just as well as her words, and this time she seemed more amused, as if she had a guess what he was doing. "But one of the times there was… sort of."

"Interesting," Kurt said, pretending he was putting a lot of thought into what they were talking about but in reality, when she'd spoken he'd finished lining up his face in front of hers. Now he was as close as he could get to being lined up without being able to see her. At least, he thought he was. He'd soon find out how he'd done.

Leaning slowly forward once again, he got exactly the result he'd been trying for when his nose bumped gently against hers. He heard her chuckle again, sounding more relaxed this time, and she turned her head just slightly, so that her nose slid to the side of his, still touching. It was intimate and innocent all at once.

"Did you give up?" she asked quietly, their faces now _almost_ as close together as they could get. "You stopped asking questions." She wasn't quite sure how much space was between their lips, but she knew that it wasn't very much.

"On the contrary," he said, his smile wide, "I'm pretty sure I figured it out." He didn't say anything else, simply leaned his face a fraction of an inch closer to hers, hearing her breath hitch in surprise.

His hands had slid up her arms to her shoulders as they'd been talking, and they were now at the back of her neck.

"Are you doing this just to try to distract me from thinking about where we are?" she asked suddenly. She was surprised when he stopped moving immediately, and somehow she knew that he'd stopped smiling.

"I would never do this _just_ to distract you," he told her sincerely, and she knew without a doubt that he meant it. Once again, her chest ached a little bit at the genuine tone of his voice.

"Do what, exactly?" she whispered, smiling even as the ache in her chest faded only slowly.

"This," he said simply, leaning forward again. A second later he'd closed the distance between them, his lips finding hers with perfect accuracy, even in the dark. It was, perhaps, a slightly gentler kiss than the previous two, one that started a little slower, as if to make up for the lack of information available from their eyes beforehand. She would almost have described it as tentative at first, as if he wasn't sure how she would react… which seemed rather incomprehensible to her. She had been sure that she had lost the chance for this ever happening again, and suddenly her heart was bursting with happiness.

Considering that she'd been close to breathless with panic since she'd woken up in this tiny cell, or closet, or whatever it was, and that her breathing had only really settled down in the last few minutes, it didn't take long before Jane needed air again. Leaning back reluctantly, breathing much faster than she had been a minute before, she immediately missed the contact with him and wished that she could see his face just then. Not sure where exactly she would end up, she tilted her forehead forward, a second later bumping gently against _his_ forehead, exactly as she'd hoped. She felt the pressure of him leaning his forehead back against hers as well.

"It's okay if this one isn't one of your favorite memories," he told her softly. "There's extenuating circumstances."

He heard her breathe out softly, almost like a chuckle, then she whispered back, "Assuming we make it out of here alive, it's definitely on the list." She heard him exhale quickly, as if her comment had made him smile unexpectedly. It was almost as though suddenly her mind snapped back to reality then, as her own words worked deeper into her brain. _Assuming we make it out of here alive_ …

 _You got out of the black site, without_ _ **any**_ _help_ , the voice in her head reminded her. _You can do this._ She took another deep breath and willed herself to focus on the positive, and not to make herself numb. Yes, she was still in pain from her injuries, but sitting here with Kurt, she didn't **want** to be numb.

Despite the lighter tone to her words, he heard her breathing accelerate then, and she leaned her body – not just her face – closer to him. Since he was no longer sitting back against the wall, she didn't have to lean far before she was pressed close to him. His hands, which had been moving back and forth on the skin on the back of her neck, now withdrew from their position and instead, his arms wrapped around her lower back only seconds later, pulling her closer.

" _When_ we get out of here alive, we can make that list of favorite memories a lot longer," he whispered, his face only inches from hers. "Okay?" Even as she was now once again attempting to breathe normally, a small chuckle escaped her and she nodded against his forehead. Leaning his forehead back from hers just a little, he leaned down to kiss her again, this time lightly, knowing that she was already short of breath.

"Okay," she replied when he leaned back again a few seconds later. Focusing on breathing in and out, feeling his arms draped around her waist securely, she felt herself begin to stabilize again. She wasn't so much numbing herself to the feelings that this place made her feel, as she had had to do in the black site, as she was consciously deciding that she would not be defeated. Granted, they still didn't really know what they were up against, or if their captors would behave the way Keaton had, but until she knew more, it didn't make sense to make assumptions. She'd gotten herself out of _lots_ of tight situations, and this one would be no different. Determination suddenly flooded through her. After all, she had escaped from a _black site_. This place would far easier to get out of, especially with Kurt there with her… at least, she had to believe that.

He could feel the difference in her even as they sat quietly there facing each other, having no communication between them beyond what they could feel from holding onto the other. Even so, he could sense it, and he couldn't help but smile slightly. It felt so strange, as it had this whole time, to be staring directly at her and yet not be able to see her. It was unsettling, and yet, at the same time it had somehow made him far more comfortable reaching for her. While touch had always been comforting between them, there had certainly never been this much of it.

 _A silver living, maybe?_ the voice in his head teased, and he almost felt guilty for smiling at the thought.

A few more quiet seconds elapsed, and then suddenly they heard the sound of a slamming door and once again, loud voices just outside. This time, they could hear them more clearly than the previous time. Instinctively, they turned to face the door, the direction from which the voices came. Without thinking about it, Kurt shifted, sitting up rigidly and pulling himself onto his knees, pressed close into her side, his hand finding hers in the darkness and squeezing tightly.

"I'm so sick of this," one of them was roaring nearby. "Can't we just kill them?"

" _No_ ," the other one said emphatically. "You heard the boss. If you do that again, he'll consider it an act of direct disobedience, and you don't want to see what will happen to you." This was good news as far as Jane and Kurt were concerned, although it still didn't clear up exactly what these people wanted to keep them here for…

"Alright, alright, _fine_ ," the other man yelled. "I get it! I'm not stupid. I don't want to get on his bad side."

"Well I'm glad to know you've finally learned your lesson," said his friend sarcastically. Then, apparently to others in the room with them, the same man called, "You guys ready?" There were several affirmative sounding grunts, and then, chillingly, the sound of a key in the lock on the door in front of them.

Jane and Kurt had frozen in place, listening to the exchange, and now they steeled themselves for whatever was going to come, their eyes straining in the darkness which they had a feeling was about to be illuminated.

After who knew how long without a single beam of light for their eyes to adjust to, the brightness that flooded the room at the second the door swung open was blinding. It was almost as though someone had pointed spotlights directly into their eyes – that was how it felt to Jane and Kurt. They heard chuckles and several mumbled comments about their appearance, and then a loud voice from somewhere in front of them boomed, "So, who wants to go first?"

Both of them sucked in their breath, and Kurt felt Jane's hand clamp around his, as if she knew exactly what he was about to do and was warning him accordingly. _Don't_ , the gesture said.

Of course, that didn't deter him. Whatever they were going to do to them, he doubted very much that it was anything positive, and he'd be damned if he was going to let anything happen to Jane that he could prevent… especially because he knew that if he didn't speak up fast, she probably would. That was just how she was. He may have been a control freak, but she was equally as stubborn as he was about putting others' well-being first.

"First for what?" Kurt asked, trying to make his voice just as big as the man who'd just spoken to them.

"Don't you worry about that, smart ass," the man told him.

"Alright, fine. I'm first," Kurt replied without a hint of concern. He somehow managed to disengage his hand from Jane's, but only after giving it a tight squeeze. _It's going to be fine,_ the squeeze said, even though neither of them knew that for sure.

"Okay, then, stand up and walk forward," he was ordered. Kurt did just that without a second thought. His _only_ regret was that he knew how scared Jane was going to be there, alone, but he couldn't let himself think about that right now. This was more important. This was the only thing he could do to protect her, even though there was no guarantee that it would work, or for how long.

Things were beginning to come into focus around him as his eyes adjusted to the light. There were at least six large men standing just outside the door, in addition to the two just inside the doorway. Every one of them were very well armed. Escaping was definitely not going to be easy. Hands grabbed him roughly from the sides, by the arms, and now he could see the man who had spoken to them, standing just outside the door.

He looked at Kurt with a menacing grin. "You try anything, she dies," he promised smugly. "Got it?"

"Yes," he said simply. He had no intention of doing _anything_ that would put Jane in danger. He would get as much information as he could and then… well, he would figure something out. He always did.

"Same goes for you, princess," the man called over Kurt's shoulder to Jane. "You try anything, _he_ dies. Understood?"

"Yes," came Jane's reply from behind him. He knew that tone in her voice, the no-nonsense one that was probably what talking to Remi had once been like, if he had to guess.

"Good," said the man, chillingly cheerfully. "Now, since we're all on the same page, let's go." Kurt was now outside the room, being led down a hallway. His eyes had adjusted enough to the light to be able to see around him, but it still seemed impossibly bright and he had no idea where he was being taken. So far, it was just a narrow hallway with bright white walls and every ten feet or so, a door on each side.

The heavy door was slammed shut behind the men as they exited, and Jane was left in darkness again, this time alone. Standing up shakily, she pushed herself back against the wall. Having forgotten about how much her ankle hurt, she was almost surprised when she nearly fell over, unable to stand steadily on her own just then, even with the wall's help. Quickly letting herself slide back down the wall, she located her other boot, the one that Kurt had removed, along the wall to the left of her, and began the task of slowly and carefully putting it back on. She now felt the throbbing of her ankle once again, along with the pain in many other parts of her body, all of which seemed to have intensified. She had stopped noticing them for a while, with so many other things going on. It surprised her just how much she had to loosen her boot in order to get it on, telling her that her ankle had swelled more than she had realized. But of course, that was a problem for later.

Standing up carefully once again, not wanting to be in a position that appeared so much weaker when they came back. She reasoned that they would come back and take her wherever they'd just taken Kurt, especially since they'd asked, 'who wants to go first?' Her breath was now coming faster once again, as she thought about what in the world they might be doing, where they were taking him… That thought chilled her even more than the thought of them coming back for her. After all, she'd been through it all before, and she knew just how horrible things could get. The thought of them doing even one of those things to Kurt... He was fearless and strong and he could withstand far more than the average person, she knew, but because she cared so deeply for him, the thought of them torturing him, no matter how little, bothered her far more than the idea of having the exact same thing done to her.

 _This is all because of me,_ she thought, a wave of guilt threatening to knock her over. That was when she felt it, the familiar numbness slipping back over her like a blanket. She hated the thought of slipping back to that place, where she practically disengaged from her body, but she'd already proven that if she had to, she could.

 _There's always a way out._

Roman's words echoed in her head from long ago. She'd escaped from Hell itself once, and other, lesser situations many other times. This time would be no different. All of her senses remained on high alert, the physical pain from the different regions of her body first intensifying, and then fading as she focused on tuning it out.

 _Pain is a dream_ , she reminded herself. _A bad dream_. She would focus on her well-being, on her health, later. Right now, she needed to focus on staying _alive_. To do that, she had to remain alert. Nothing else mattered. She would figure out how to save them both.

All of the noise had retreated from outside the door. The complete silence was almost worse, and her ears strained to hear something… _anything_. The minutes stretched on and one, but still, Jane did not relax. For what felt like an endless stretch of time, she did the only thing she could do… she waited.


	3. All of It

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)**_

Jane stood in the dark, her heart hammering so loudly that the noise filled her ears. There was no other sound, not even the men's shouts, and she wondered desperately where they'd taken Kurt. Her fear of his fate was so great, based on her experience at the black site, that it almost completely eclipsed her panic and fear for herself, there in the dark room that so reminded her of the last time she'd been locked in a small room, in between Keaton's attempts to extract information from her by breaking her, mentally and physically. She continued to hear nothing, but that didn't make her feel any better. They could have taken him somewhere soundproof, after all, and done any manner of horrible things to him.

 _And it would be all my fault,_ she told herself miserably. _If I had never…_

 _It wasn't you,_ she heard him telling her inside her head. _You are not Remi._

And yet… even though she knew that she wasn't, she also knew that she _was_. Physically, anyway, she was that person. Or… she _had been_ that person. It was overwhelming.

Breathing normally was quickly becoming impossible, and she had to consciously remind herself to calm down. As numb as she'd made herself to her own pain, the panic that she felt on Kurt's behalf was far more difficult to shut down. If anything happened to him… No. It simply wasn't a thought she could even fathom. The thought of _not_ having him in her life was something she couldn't accept.

 _Stop being so stupid,_ a cold, sarcastic voice said from somewhere in the back of her mind, and it startled her. That sounded an awful lot like something Remi would say, and the tone she would probably use.

She froze, her thoughts included, and just stood there, now even more terrified. Since when did Remi consciously talk to her? Waiting anxiously to see if the voice would go on, she was relieved when nothing else came, only the thundering of her own heartbeat, her own desperate thoughts.

 _Great, I needed something else to be anxious about,_ she thought sarcastically. Focusing on calming herself down, reminding herself that thinking rationally was the _only_ chance she had of figuring out how they could get out of there alive, she felt her pulse gradually relenting just a little. There was still no sound from the world outside, but she tried to see it as a positive. There were no sounds of agony, so at least for this moment, she still had hope that Kurt was perfectly fine.

Continuing to take very deliberate breaths, she focused on the smooth wall behind her, on standing on her good ankle, which was quickly growing tired from holding all of her weight. That didn't really matter. She'd survived much worse, and this would be no exception.

 _Breathe in. Breathe out,_ she reminded herself. She stood against the wall and waited. And waited. And waited. Time seemed to drag on endlessly, since she had no way to mark how long it had been since they'd been locked in, and no way to know how long it had been since Kurt had been led away. Her heart ached as she remembered him immediately speaking up, telling them to take him, before she had had a chance to do exactly that. He'd known that she would have, if he didn't, and he'd done it to protect her. She didn't need to be told that to know that it was true. They were very much the same in that way.

 _Please be okay,_ she silently begged. _Please._

Not far away, but out in the world lit by the sun, the white of the walls on either side of Kurt were so bright they were nearly blinding as they walked down the narrow hallway. Even after more than a minute, it still seemed too bright to his sensitive eyes, feeling almost as though the walls were reflecting light directly back at him. At the end of the hall the procession stopped – there were three armed men in front of him, and three behind him. The one who'd seemed to be the leader turned around and looked him in the eye. "Remember, if you try anything, your little girlfriend back there dies. Do we understand each other?"

Kurt stared directly in the man's eyes, taking a deep breath against the anger he felt building inside him. Threatening him was one thing, but threatening _Jane_ … the man must have known – or at least guessed – the effect that would have had on Kurt. Kurt stared hard at him, and the other man stared right back, neither of them blinking or looking away.

"Perfectly," Kurt growled finally, attempting to stay calm but finding it harder the longer he thought about harm coming to Jane.

"Good," the other man said, looking satisfied that they had an understanding. He turned and opened the door to Kurt's left, there at the end of the hall, which he hadn't even noticed. Behind the door, Kurt was surprised to find an ordinary looking bathroom. The floor was dirty white linoleum and the tiles on the wall were pale green, chipped in more than one place and looking like they hadn't been cleaned in longer than Jane had been Jane… but other than being a little dirty, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it.

"You've got two minutes," the man growled at him. "And don't forget…"

"I got it," Kurt repeated, gritting his teeth as the hands that held tightly onto his arms released him and he stepped stiffly through the bathroom door.

"Oh, and just in case you don't really care about what happens to tattoo girl as much as I think you do, I have a couple guys outside the window, too, so I wouldn't try to escape even if you _don't_ care if I kill her," the sandy haired man added, before closing the door behind Kurt. He heard a lock from the _outside_ , and noticed that the doorknob appeared to have been reversed.

Sighing, Kurt took advantage of the unexpected chance to use the bathroom and wash his hands, then stared at himself in the large mirror above the sink. It was still a little bit surreal to be able to see _anything_ , after the extended time in the darkness. It was nice, except for the fact that he looked like absolute hell. He'd been roughed up almost as badly as Jane had before they'd ended up in the dark cell, and there were bruises forming in several places that he could see in the mirror – his forehead and his chin, to be exact – as well as several that he couldn't see at that moment, since they were currently hidden by his clothes, but that he could could _feel_.

The banging on the door signaled to him that his two minutes were up, and he turned his attention back towards the door, which began opening almost immediately. Staring forward with the same cold expression that he'd given the man who'd not so subtly told him to stay in line before, he met those same menacing eyes once again. If he didn't know better, he'd say that the other man was actually _enjoying_ this.

"Let's go," he told Kurt gruffly, motioning him out of the narrow bathroom. Kurt complied, not currently having another choice. After all, there was no way he was risking Jane's safety. Besides, before they did anything, they needed to have a plan.

Kurt said nothing as they marched him back down the hall toward the doorway that he knew led to the dark room where, he hoped, Jane was in the same condition in which he had left her.

When they stopped just outside the door, Kurt took a chance, turning toward the man and asking, "Are you going to tell us what we're doing here? What you _want_?" Looking at him in amusement, as if he'd just noticed that Kurt was standing near him, the man laughed.

"When it's time for you to know what's going on, Mr. FBI, you'll know," he told him with a sneer. The effect was chilling. This was one piece of information, at least – these men knew that Kurt was FBI.

Turning back to the door, the man's grin once again indicated to Kurt that he was getting far more amusement out of the situation than any normal person would have. Kurt just watched him carefully, knowing that it was his last chance to gather whatever information he could before he was stuck back into the dark room again. The door creaked open loudly, and for a second it looked like Jane had vanished. There was an audible gasp from the men looking into the room, but then they all saw her, almost all at once, and the murmurs died down.

Jane was leaning against the wall, squinting in their direction but, as Kurt remembered from prior experience, seeing nothing but bright light. All she could do was hope that somewhere in the bright light was Kurt, and that he was OK.

When Kurt didn't walk through the doorway fast enough, the leader of the group shoved him, hard, and he almost lost his balance as he stumbled forward into the room. He saw Jane's eyes try to follow the sound, but she still hadn't quite focused on him, simply squinting into the light. Therefore, her expression was still one of outright fear.

"Jane," he whispered quickly, wanting to let her know their intention was, he thought, innocent enough, so that she might relax even just a little. Her face lost a little of its tension at the sound of his voice, and in a few more steps he had reached her, at the wall.

She could partially make out his face as her eyes adjusted to the light. There were probably only seconds left, she knew, before they either shut the door or – more frighteningly – made her go along with them wherever they'd taken Kurt.

"Let's go, princess," boomed the voice from the door. She inhaled sharply.

"It's just the bathroom, Jane. That's where they took me," he whispered. His hands were on her shoulders, squeezing reassuringly. He wanted to make the most of the time in which he stood in front of her, since he was fairly sure they were about to take _her_ down the hall to the bathroom. As much as he didn't want her out of his sight, as long as they didn't do anything to hurt her, that was actually something he was OK with. After all, she'd be pretty uncomfortable if they _didn't_ take her to the bathroom…

Feeling a little bit of relief that at least Kurt was alright, she nodded as she saw his face coming into focus, looking suspiciously almost as roughed up as she had been. _He never mentioned_ _ **that**_ _,_ she couldn't help but think.

"My ankle," Jane whispered to Kurt. "I don't think I can walk."

"Her ankle's broken, we think," Kurt said in the direction of the voice, the bright light from the doorway now slightly blinding to him once again as he stood in the darkness. "I can—"

"You can't stay right where you're at," the leader told him calmly. "Let's see you try and walk, princess."

Jane swallowed hard, and Kurt, after one more squeeze of her shoulders and an intense look at her poor swollen face, which he'd been unable to see until now, dropped his hands from her shoulders and stepped to the side, hating that he was unable to help her. Even watching her take one step, knowing that she was probably going to collapse, or at the very least be in a lot of pain, was painful to _him_ , as well.

As expected, Jane's ankle buckled under her as soon as she put weight on it, and she landed on her knees.

"You think she's fakin'?" she heard one of the men ask another.

"Nah," said the leader. Then, turning to a man at the back of the group, he called, "Hey, Daryl, go get her up and help her get down the hall."

It would have been hard to say which of them was more anxious at these words, Jane or Kurt. Of course, under normal circumstances, Jane was more than able to handle herself with anyone who might think of getting too close to her or putting their hands in the wrong place, even with a broken ankle. But with the admonition of "Try anything and he dies," _he_ being Kurt, Jane was completely at the mercy of these strangers and their questionable intentions, at least until they figured out a safe way to escape. Still, if they really did intend to simply take her to the bathroom, then maybe she didn't have as much to worry about as she'd feared.

A scrawny man with greasy blonde hair that hung down to his chin stepped through the doorway and walked toward Jane. He couldn't have been more than just out of his teens, at the most, and he wore a bored, sullen look that reinforced the idea that he may well _still_ be a teenager. As the only one in the group who wasn't large and imposing, it seemed likely that his size and less than threatening appearance was perhaps the reason he'd been kept out of sight until that point. Kurt glared daggers at the man, already hating the idea of him getting close to Jane.

Daryl stood in front of Jane and crossed his arms, waiting for her to get up. "Oh for fuck's sake, help her up, you asshole!" yelled the leader. "You got no manners, or what?" With a heavy sigh, Daryl dropped his arms and extended a hand to Jane, who, having little other choice, took it and accepted his half-hearted assistance with getting back up.

"C'mon, let's go," Daryl told her in annoyance, finally putting his arm around Jane's waist with an ugly grin, as if he'd just realized that he was going to _really_ enjoy this.

Jane could actually feel the tension radiating off of Kurt from behind her, without even turning around. She wanted to signal to him that she was fine, but there was no way to do so.

Hating that she had no other choice, Jane leaned as far away from Daryl as she could while still needing to lean _on_ him, her arm over his shoulder as she hopped along beside him slowly. She tried not to think about his grasp on her, which was uncomfortably tight, and she could still feel Kurt's eyes boring into the back of her head. Attempting to turn around for a glance at him, she found that she couldn't turn her head at the right angle in time and ended up out the door before her eyes had found him.

Standing by the wall where he'd been with Jane only a few seconds before, on the other hand, Kurt anxiously watched her go, hoping that her "excursion" would be as quick and, relatively speaking, painless as his had been.

Now it was his turn to wait.

Jane and Daryl and the rest of the procession that had accompanied Kurt down the hall went straight to the same bathroom door to which Kurt had just been taken.

"I'm assuming you don't want Daryl here to help you any more in there?" the leader asked, as if he thought he was really funny.

"No, thank you," Jane replied with a scowl.

"Well, then, have at it," the man said with a nod into the small bathroom. "You have two minutes. And I'll tell you the same thing I told your boyfriend – in case you decide you're so desperate to escape that you don't care if he dies, there's guys outside that window there, too. If you've really got a busted ankle, then you definitely won't get far… so it's probably not worth the risk, I'd think…"

"Got it," Jane growled, turning to go into the bathroom as she hopped on one leg, holding onto the wall for balance and the door closed hard behind her. After she was finished, she did the same thing Kurt had done, staring hard at herself in the mirror. He was right, the right side of her face was painfully swollen, though at the moment, she didn't feel it. Pain wasn't registering with her just then, the only sign that anything was wrong being that her left ankle wasn't supporting her weight.

Staring at her reflection, she found that if she concentrated hard enough, she could almost see Kurt beside her. While she'd blocked out all of the physical pain, at that moment she felt an ache in her chest. As determined as she was that they would figure out a way out of this, the possibility always existed that they wouldn't. How many times would their close calls be just that, instead of the unthinkable? No one could guarantee that at some point, their luck wouldn't run out… that _this time_ , their luck wouldn't run out.

 _Don't think like that_ , she reminded herself. _Whatever is happening, there's_ _ **always**_ _a way out. So_ _ **find it**_ _._

Just then, there was pounding on the door and she turned around instinctively towards the noise. The door opened and the same group of men were glaring at her, her new friend Daryl being front and center. He hadn't done anything inappropriate, exactly, just clung too hard to her, leaning into her far more than she was comfortable with. Still, all things considered, the walk to the bathroom hadn't been _too_ bad. She could handle another one of the same to get back to Kurt, even if it meant going back into that dark hole for the time being.

 _There's always a way out_ , her mind repeated. They were far more likely to find it together, just like they normally did.

Hopping to the door, she grudgingly let Daryl hold her up as they walked in the center of the heavily armed group of men back down the bright white hallway to the door that led to darkness. She felt her pulse quicken as the key turned in the lock, glaring at the group's apparent leader as he opened it and then grinned at her widely, extending his arm in mock politeness, indicating that she should enter. This time, Daryl only went as far with her as the doorway, stopping and, after a brief and unwelcome squeeze around her waist that made her gasp slightly in surprise, he dropped his arm from her, leaving her to hop into the small room on her own.

Kurt had been staring hard at the door since he'd heard the key in the lock, and he'd been barely able to make out the shapes of people in the doorway against the bright light from behind them. When only one of the shapes continued forward into the room, he knew that it was Jane, and he started forward before all of the light was extinguished as the door closed again behind her. She'd hopped forward, but lost her balance quickly, and probably would have hit the floor hard if he hadn't managed to reach her at the very second when she lurched forward. The room – if it could be called that – had already been plunged back into darkness, and though he tried to hold them both up, they ended up on the floor once more, Kurt cushioning her fall.

Sitting up and pulling his arms around her, he hugged her harder than he ever had before, suddenly having trouble catching his breath. "Are you okay?" he mumbled urgently, pressing his face into her hair. He hadn't even realized just _how_ worried about her he'd been – though he'd _known_ that he had been worried about her – until she'd hopped back into the room and he'd caught her before she'd fallen. His anxiety level began to drop only very slowly as he assured himself that she really was there. Holding onto her himself just didn't even seem to be quite reassurance enough.

"I'm okay, Kurt," she said, nodding against him, feeling herself suddenly having trouble breathing normally as well, as the numb sensation she'd slipped back into began to fade and she felt herself shaking. All in all, it hadn't been bad, but it was just the thought that they might do something to _him_ if they decided that they didn't like what _she_ did… What they did to her didn't matter, as far as she was concerned, as long as they left him alone.

What made the whole thing so ironic was that he felt the same way about her. They were both now weak with relief that the _other_ one was alright, with little to no thought to their own well-being.

He felt shaking, but he honestly couldn't tell if it was him or her, or maybe both of them, so he simply held on tighter to her, pulling her more securely into his lap as he shifted to sit up all the way, there in the middle of the room. Slowly, their breathing normalized, helped by the feel of the other there, safe and alive.

"You never told me they beat you up, too," she whispered with a hint of accusation.

"It doesn't matter, I'm fine," he insisted. "They didn't hit me nearly as hard as you. Which reminds me, I would give anything to get some ice on that face of yours and some painkillers for you." The tenderness in his voice threatened to take her breath away.

"It's fine," she replied, still feeling like sitting there with his arms wrapped tightly around her was too good to be true. "I don't even feel it."

"Which means you're either in shock, or you're disassociating from the pain," he told her without hesitation, "because there's _no way_ that that wouldn't hurt."

She sighed, not having an answer for that. "And what about you?" she asked, turning the conversation back around. "It looked like they roughed you up pretty well, too. Where else are you injured? Am _I_ going to need to do that check for injuries that you 'threatened' _me_ with?" Her voice was somehow light and joking and yet tight and serious at the same time. After all, where they were wasn't funny in the least, but she could at least give him a hard time for making such a big deal of her injuries while not even mentioning his own…

"Do you mean that as a threat, or a promise?" he asked, and she could hear the same mix of emotions in his voice – the playfulness mixed with seriousness.

She sighed heavily, and was surprised when her breath came out shakily, instead of with a laugh, as she expected. After all, she told herself, it was completely normal to be afraid in this situation, even if she was determined to tell herself that she _wasn't._ She took a few more deep breaths, trying to calm her sudden panic.

He laid his cheek against the top of her head, pulling his arms tighter still, willing it all to be okay. "They need us for something," he said in the most soothing voice he could muster. "They've been ordered to treat us well, at least for the time being." She nodded against him, trying to soak in the calm that he seemed to be exuding. "It's going to be okay," he added.

 _Funny how you work so hard to tell yourself that, but it sounds so much more believable when he says it,_ she thought.

"Yeah," she murmured, sounding unconvinced. After sitting in silence for a while once again, this time Jane was the first one to speak. "What happened the next day?" she asked. She didn't know why, but she'd thought back to his story, how he'd latched onto the day _before_ his birthday. "On your birthday?"

For a few seconds he was still and quiet, and she wondered if she shouldn't have asked. "I'm sorry," she added quickly, "You don't have to—"

But he shook his head against hers, so that she felt it. "No, it's fine," he assured her. "I just hadn't thought about it in a long time…" He paused to gather his thoughts, then continued. "When my mom was around, my birthday was always so much fun. Even without doing anything major, she made it special. After that…" he shook his head. "It was like the magic disappeared with her. My dad made an attempt every year, for both of our birthdays, but he just wasn't that guy. He wasn't good at making things special. I guess he just had too many problems of his own… And you never knew if he'd be sober. Which… he usually wasn't, at least when it counted."

Kurt lifted his head and stared off into the darkness, feeling sad for his childhood self as if he hadn't _been_ that kid. It was hard to remember because what came afterwards had eclipsed everything else, but he'd already been somewhat broken before Taylor had disappeared, which was why it had hurt that much more.

Jane lifted her head as well, staring up in his direction, once again frustrated that she couldn't see him. It was hard to know which of them had it worse – not remembering your painful childhood, or remembering something so painful that you actively tried to forget. Of course, each of them assumed that it was worse for the other, and Jane's heart ached for him just then. Sitting up a little straighter in his lap, her hands moved slowly, starting just below his shoulders, up the back of his neck and then around to his cheeks, her thumbs fanning out gently across the scruff on either side.

She wanted to say something sympathetic, but what was there to say that could possibly cover it? That kind of pain, that he'd felt for nearly his entire life… she had no concept of that much time, so it was simply impossible for her to imagine. However, because she was as empathetic as she was, and because their connection was so strong, even without being able to understand, her heart ached for him until she felt as though it would burst. She wondered if his mother had ever realized the damage she was doing when she'd decided to leave.

As painful as the memory was, he hadn't minded telling her. He'd never really liked his birthday after his mom had left, and this was why. It couldn't compete with the ones he'd had when he'd been young enough that his memories were fuzzy. And maybe he was idealizing those early ones a little, and they hadn't really been that magical, but there was nothing he could do about that at this point, because that was the way he remembered them. Never in a million years would he have talked about all this with anyone else… and yet, he told Jane without a second thought.

The sensation of her hands on his face was soothing, and the sting of the memory began to fade slowly into the background. It was funny that, had they never been trapped in the dark, he was fairly sure that neither of them would have been bold enough to do a lot of the things they had done since they'd been there… they would have done a lot of this comforting of each other with their eyes, like they usually did, instead of their hands. Touch had always been important to them, but they had never used it quite _this much_.

And yet, there was something to be said for this level of intimacy that they'd suddenly jumped up to… who knew how long it might have taken them if they _hadn't_ ended up here…

Focusing on breathing in and out, and on Jane's hands on his face, his eyes fell closed – not that that made any difference, it was merely something that happened instinctually when he felt this much raw emotion. She hadn't said anything else, but she hadn't needed to. The feelings were all there, communicated perfectly.

"I'm sorry I asked," she whispered.

"Don't be," he replied. "I wouldn't tell anyone else those stories… but I _want_ to tell you. All of it." She smiled sadly, because it was bittersweet. There were _so many_ of those sad stories in his past, she knew… a lifetime worth. And while she hated that they existed, that he had been through that much, her heart ached with happiness that he would even think of telling her one of them, much less want to share them all.

He could hear the sad smile in the change in her breathing, and was surprised, because he hadn't even known that that was possible. Then again, maybe it was only possible because it was Jane, the person he knew and understood best.

Her thumbs continued to move back and forth on his cheeks, and she felt the muscles beneath her fingers contract as he smiled slowly. "You're going to put me to sleep, doing that," he told her quietly.

"Oh yeah?" she said with a smile of her own.

"Mmmmhmmmm…" he said, nodding. "I should scoot back to the wall first so I don't fall over." They'd ended up in the middle of the floor, where he'd caught Jane just before she'd fallen over upon coming back from the bathroom, thanks to her possibly broken ankle. She chuckled at the thought of him falling over asleep because she'd relaxed him that much by rubbing her hands on his face.

With that, Kurt reluctantly lowered his arms from around her, then carefully did scoot himself – and Jane along with him, since she was on his lap – back towards the wall on which they'd been leaning earlier, feeling Jane's hands slip down to clasp behind his neck to help ensure that she didn't lose her balance and fall off his lap as they moved. Even when they stopped, she didn't move them back to his face right away, instead letting her fingers dance across the back of his neck. It was another pleasant sensation, and the bad memories of his tenth birthday continued to fade back into his memory. Without realizing it, he'd leaned his head forward, towards her, and was surprised when his forehead touched hers.

They both smiled then, having almost forgotten where they were and the danger that they were still in. That was how powerful the feelings that coursed through them just then were – they could literally block out the fact that they'd been captured and thrown into a dark cell, their lives having been threatened.

Now leaning his back against the wall, he put his arms back around her and held on tight. Before she had a chance to move her hands from his neck, however, there was noise outside the door – a sudden loud commotion, shouts, and if they weren't mistaken, gunfire. They froze in place, and she felt his arms tighten around her protectively. Not that he would be able to do anything to protect her if someone with malicious intentions opened the door to their little room… but that was his first instinct. They both sat perfectly still, just listening.

"Where are they?" The voice rang out loud and clear, and they both smiled.

They were about to be rescued.

 _A/N: Yes, there's more coming. I'm not sure how much, but at least one chapter. I'm going to be out of town this weekend, so it may take me a few extra days, but the next chapter should still be posted before next week's NEW episode. :)_


	4. Complicated

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)**_

 _A/N: I found myself with a lot more writing time than expected this weekend, and the inspiration just flowed… so much sooner than expected, here's the next chapter. I think the one after this one will be the last one, but all I know is there's definitely at least one more. Like I always say, Jane and Kurt are the ones who tell_ _ **me**_ _what they want to do, so I can't be sure until I write it. Thank you so much to everyone who has left me such nice reviews on this story. It has been so much fun… and yes, I promise I'll soon be back to I See You. :)_

Even though the voice they'd heard outside the door told them that they were no longer in danger, Jane tensed even more when the door began to open. At this point, it was some sort of involuntary reaction. Just like before, all they saw blinding light, and then shadows. This time, several shadows peeked in, guns raised to look into the corners of the room, and then they heard Zapata's voice – which was _not_ the one they'd heard from outside the door, but an even more welcome one.

"Jane? Weller? Jesus, are you guys okay?" She sounded relieved and at the same time genuinely shocked, and they knew why. From looking in the mirror, they both knew that they looked like hell.

Having cleared the room, Zapata walked through the door, summoning the agent behind her – whose name the other two didn't immediately remember, since he was only part of their back up team – to bring a large flashlight to sweep the room for anything they could use. It was only after taking several steps that Zapata suddenly stopped, realizing what she was looking at… that Jane was sitting on Weller's lap, and that his arms were around her protectively.

Holstering her gun, Zapata folded her arms across her chest and grinned at them. _About damn time,_ she thought. She didn't say it, knowing that the look on her face – if they were able to see anything through the glare after being trapped in the dark in here – would be enough. She wished fleetingly that Reade was there, knowing that despite his initial misgivings about Jane, he would ultimately have been as amused, and admittedly, happy to see this as she was. But her partner was still… working through things. She'd watched the video with him and knew that it was going to be a while before he was okay.

Zapata's smile faltered slightly, but rebounded as she focused on the two in front of her. She had to believe that Reade would be okay, but Jane and Weller… well, it looked like they were closer to _okay_ than they'd ever been, despite the horrific circumstances in which they'd found themselves. She wondered if Weller would kill her if she wrote in her report _exactly_ how she'd found them… or if she should maybe leave that tiny bit out.

When Jane began to focus on Zapata, right around the time that Zapata was grinning at them knowingly, that was when Kurt finally felt her begin to relax for the first time. Slowly, her head fell down against his shoulder, and he felt her almost go limp with relief. She'd been sitting – or standing – rigidly for how many hours now? He had no idea. To witness her seem to wilt completely was both a relief, since it meant she could finally relax, but also worrisome. It wasn't like Jane. She was always so strong.

After grinning gratefully in Zapata's direction, still not quite able to focus on her, Kurt shifted his attention back to Jane. Though it may have seemed to someone else that she was simply weak with relief, something told him to be concerned – and his instincts when it came to Jane were usually right. Lowering his face near her ear, but careful not to press against the alarmingly swollen skin on the right side of her face, he whispered, "Are you okay?"

She took several shaky breaths, appearing to try to compose herself but not quite getting there, before she finally answered. "I don't think so," was her reply, and yet again, he felt an ache in his chest. Never mind what had been done to him. It paled in comparison to how this had affected her. After all, it was compounded on top of the trauma of her torture at the black site, on top of everything _else_ that had happened in her past, so that even though relatively speaking this hadn't been the worst thing that had ever been done to them, for Jane it had been far worse than for Kurt.

Zapata's amusement had changed to concern by now, and she walked forward slowly towards them. "Is she okay?" she asked Kurt worriedly, looking at Jane just as Kurt looked back up.

"Being trapped in here was a little too reminiscent of the black site for her," Kurt said quietly, shifting slowly and carefully so that he could stand up. "She's injured, but I need to at least take her outside. She needs to be… out of this room. _Now_."

She nodded, having no intention of arguing with her boss when it came to Jane's well-being. There was no universe in which that would have been a good idea. Placing an awkward hand on his shoulder for a second, she said, "I'm glad you guys are okay, Weller." For a second, he stopped moving and looked up at her. "We were really worried," she added.

Kurt nodded seriously. "I was, too," he replied. "Thanks for the rescue."

Zapata stepped back, seemingly just remembering something that she just wanted to forget. "Oh, about that," she began slowly. "We had some help, and… well, let's just say that you have a, uh, _friend_ who's going to be _insufferable_ for a very long time."

Shifting slowly so that he could stand up without having to put Jane down, which meant pushing up without the luxury of bracing his hands against the ground, the sore muscles in Kurt's legs protested, but ultimately cooperated. Finally on his feet, holding Jane with one arm behind her knees, and the other around her back, her face burrowed into his neck, he looked at Zapata in confusion.

"What friend?" he asked, momentarily forgetting that he'd already heard said friend's voice through the door.

Rolling her eyes, Zapata just shook her head, starting towards the door. "Oh, you'll see. Just wait," she replied as she looked back over her shoulder at him. Personally, she'd already had more than enough of this particular person for the next year or so… though sadly, he never seemed to be able to stay away more than a few months, at most.

Kurt followed Zapata through the door, into the entryway outside the room they'd been imprisoned inside. The entry was crowded with agents milling around, radios crackling. It was the normal chaos that accompanied a scene when they were called in as reinforcements… except for the man who bounded over to them as soon as they cleared the door of the dark cell before anyone could stop him.

"Stubbles! Janie! I was so worried!" Rich Dotcom cried, looking as if he was going to throw his arms around both of them, but then stopping just short of doing so when he saw the look on Kurt's face.

With a sigh, Kurt now understood what Zapata had been talking about. Really, he was too tired to deal with Rich, and his only concern just then was Jane. "Hi, Rich. What the hell are you doing here?" he asked.

"Well, you know, I sort of… helped rescue you!" Rich said triumphantly, ignoring Kurt's lack of a smile in his direction. When Kurt raised an eyebrow at him, he elaborated. "I have a friend who knew someone who had a friend who'd worked with those guys you were, uh, pretending to _work with_ today," Rich added, using exaggerated air quotes to give the last words more emphasis, winking at him comically. "So when I heard that you guys had dropped off the radar, I made a few calls and…" Once again, he looked like he was going to burst with excitement. "Here we are!"

With a sigh, Kurt silently agreed with Zapata. After this, Rich really _was_ going to be insufferable. "Well, thank you," he told him seriously, looking back down at Jane, whose eyes were closed as she leaned against him. She looked like she could have been asleep, but he had a feeling that she wasn't.

"Is she okay?" Rich asked, his voice changing from excited to dramatic concern in less than a second.

"She will be," Kurt replied, determination in his voice, without looking back up at Rich. "But we need to get her checked out as soon as the EMTs get here."

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the crowd as several agents nearby appeared to be pushed out of the way to reveal Patterson cutting through the crowd. "Weller! Jane! Oh, thank God!" she cried, running up to them and, unlike Rich, _not_ stopping herself from throwing her arms around them both together. Kurt didn't mind Patterson's hug the way he would have minded Rich's, however, and when she stepped back to stare at them appraisingly a few seconds later, he was smiling at her. Rich looked less than pleased to have been overshadowed, but he knew and liked Patterson, so he stepped back and observed the scene unfolding before him.

"Patterson, what are you doing here?" he asked in surprise.

"I was set up out in the van," she replied, staring worriedly at Jane. "With Reade out and you guys missing, we thought that just in case they needed back up… I mean, the other agents are good and everything, but…"

"You were worried and wanted to be on site?" he asked her gently, at which she blushed. He couldn't help but smile at her. It was so very Patterson.

"I'm so glad you guys are okay," she told him, her eyes watering slightly.

"Thanks," he told her sincerely. "I'm pretty relieved, myself," he added, cracking a smile.

Zapata walked up to him then. "Weller, the paramedics are here. You guys need to get checked out. Especially Jane," she said sternly, her eyes darting towards Rich, who raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"No arguments here," he said. Rich's voice faded into the crowd behind Kurt as he and Jane, along with Patterson and Zapata, threaded their way carefully through the crush of agents in the entryway of what appeared to him to be a small, one story office building of some kind towards the door. He was careful not to bump Jane's legs against anyone, and he stopped as Patterson opened the glass door for them so that they could exit into the cool evening air. It occurred to Kurt that he didn't really know how long they'd been in there, since it had been dark the whole time, and they'd woken up in there, but at that moment it wasn't the most important thing.

One of the EMTs walked up to him, looking at Jane with concern. "Agent Weller? Come on over here and let's have a look at the two of you," the young man told him. Kurt would normally have tried to insist that he was fine, that he didn't need their attention, but as long as they were going to be treating Jane there was no way he was going anywhere, so he decided that he may as well be cooperative.

As he sat there and the EMTs examined and treated their injuries, his eyes remained locked on Jane. Her replies to them were absolutely minimal, sometimes non-existent, and Kurt couldn't help but think that the EMTs looked unusually serious as they checked her out. _They're just being professional,_ he tried to reassure himself, but he worried that _they_ looked worried as they looked at her. Of course, it could have just been the fact that _he_ was worried… because he _was_.

In the end, by the time the EMTs were done with them, the crowd of agents at the scene had largely dispersed. Most of the group that Jane and Kurt had infiltrated had been either killed or arrested, with two of them having escaped and then caught within the hour. So despite the dreadful way the op had ended, it hadn't been all for nothing. That would just have to be the silver lining this time… well, along with the other, more personal one.

Both Jane and Kurt had been ordered by the EMTs to report for follow up examination by a doctor, and to rest for "at least a few days," and Jane's ankle – which wasn't broken, but badly sprained – had been wrapped tightly, her temple cleaned up and bandaged. Thankfully, her other injuries not being as serious as Kurt had feared, but she was going to be sore for quite a while, as was he. Of course, if it had only been Kurt who'd received these instructions, he would have ignored them and been at work early the next morning. But because Jane was involved, he had every intention of keeping her close and making sure that she rested, that she didn't try to overdo anything. It was a double standard, he knew, but he didn't care.

Zapata and Patterson had waited around for them, and when they were finally released by the EMTs, the two offered to drive them home. Jane was sitting beside Kurt along the back of the ambulance, his hand covering hers on the small space on the small space of the metal step between them. It was as though just then, he had to have at least that much contact with her to prove to himself that she was actually there beside him.

She'd been listening but not participating in any conversation since Kurt had carried her out of that dark room, and at the mention of going home he felt her stiffen. Pulling his fingers around hers gently, so that he was actually holding her hand, and not just covering hers with his, he turned towards her. She was now looking down at the ground, her breathing already slightly faster than it had been a minute before. He leaned down closer to her, so that his nose touched the side of her head. "Your place or mine?" he asked her, which made her turn slowly and look at him, shyly, in surprise. He realized then that it was the first time she'd looked at him in the eyes since before they'd been trapped together in the dark, a fact that he stored for later, wondering if she'd been avoiding looking at him since they'd been rescued.

She could admit, though only to herself, that the thought of going home wasn't appealing whatsoever just then, which was the reason she'd tensed up at the suggestion. Yes, Roman would be there, which normally made her happy. However, just then the thought of going to her place and Kurt going to his, separately… she didn't even try to identify why it made her feel so panicked, she only knew that it did. A second later, however, Kurt's hand was squeezing hers gently, and he was leaning his face against her, asking "You're place or mine?" Looking up at him shyly, in surprise, all she could do after looking into his eyes for a few seconds was look back down and shrug.

"Fine, mine then," he told her gently, before turning back to Zapata and Patterson, who had, of course, been watching the exchange with matching smiles on their faces.

"Thanks," he said, smiling tiredly. "You can drop us both off at my place." Some other time, having them know that he was going to take her home with him so that he could take care of her would probably have made him uncomfortable. But at this point, he realized, there was really no point in being self-conscious. After all, he supposed, they'd known how he felt longer than _he_ had. Besides, he didn't think he needed to explain to these two women, who were closer to him than his own sister, that Jane needed to be taken care of, or that _he_ needed to be the one to do it.

Neither of the other two said a word, they just smiled knowingly as the four of them walked towards the SUV that Zapata had driven to get there, which was now one of the last vehicles left on the scene. She and Patterson walked to the car ahead of the other two, giving them space. Jane was on crutches, moving slowly and determinedly, Kurt walking slowly beside her, watching her unsteady progress and ready to catch her if that became necessary. It didn't, however, and ultimately they all made it to the car.

Kurt opened the door for Jane, taking her crutches from her and holding them until she was securely inside, then closed the door and stowed the crutches in the trunk, walking around to the other side of the car. In the back seat behind Zapata, who was driving, he moved over towards the middle so that he could sit closer to her, buckling himself in as the two women in the front seat glanced over their shoulders at him knowingly, still saying nothing.

Jane felt Kurt beside her, and felt conflicted. She wanted to lean against him, wanted the comfort of his touch… but at the same time, now that they were out in the light of day, she was starting to feel… _what?_ It wasn't that she didn't like this. On the contrary. She liked it a _lot_. Too much, maybe.

After all, she'd lost him once before, completely and totally. The memory of that feeling suddenly overtook her, covering her like a heavy blanket, until she felt it choking her. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on breathing in and out. She knew in the back of her mind that the way she was feeling wasn't normal for her. Normally she was able to block it all out. She didn't normally have these intense feelings of panic, and yet she'd had almost nothing else that day… or so it felt like to her. Of course, it hadn't been any kind of a normal day, but she chose to ignore that part.

 _But what you usually do isn't healthy,_ the voice in her head told her. _Blocking it out isn't healthy. The memory of the black site triggered all this, and now you're just overwhelmed. Physically numb and yet emotionally overwhelmed._

She knew it, and yet, knowing it didn't help. Again, she tried to focus on breathing in and out, and on nothing else. Feeling Kurt beside her made her feel simultaneously better and worse at the same time. Blissfully happy and yet… terrified.

Because what if all this was all just because they'd been stuck in the dark together? What if he'd just wanted to distract her, to calm her down? What if he didn't really feel the same way about her?

Or… what if he _did_?

She couldn't decide which of the many questions in her mind scared her the most.

 _Breathe in and out_ , she ordered herself.

Kurt was getting worried about Jane. Her breathing was too fast, and shallow, and somehow she managed to seem relaxed and tense at the same time. Something was wrong, that was all he knew for sure, but this wasn't the place to try to talk to her about it.

The drive back from the outskirts of the city, where they'd ended up being held, back to Kurt's building, felt like it took forever. He knew that not that much time had elapsed, but that his impatience was making it feel longer. Finally they made it, however, and he thanked Patterson and Zapata for their help, and for finding a diversion for Rich long enough for them to get away – he still didn't know what exactly they'd sent him off to do, only that there'd been no sign of him when they'd left the scene.

Kurt moved away from Jane, towards the door on the opposite side. By the time he'd walked around the car, she was already out, closing her door and standing by the car, one hand on the side to help her balance.

She'd momentarily forgotten that she couldn't walk on her ankle, and she only stopped just before she tried to do just that, which would have resulted in her falling on her face. Thankfully, when she'd looked down at her ankle, as she climbed out of the car, she'd remembered that she needed to wait for Kurt. Sighing heavily, she leaned against the car and waited for help, feeling worse and worse as she stared down at the ground. It was only a few seconds before he was beside her, holding her crutches, but it had already felt like ages.

He couldn't help but think that she looked exhausted. Based on how she'd been acting, it was hard to know if she'd want to use the crutches and walk on her own or lean on him. So as he stood by the passenger side window to say good bye and thank you to Patterson and Zapata, who were watching all of his carefully, he held the crutches between them, close enough that she could take them if she wanted to, but not making it look like he was insisting. She didn't move, and he took that as her decision.

Patterson looked from Jane to Kurt worriedly. Kurt saw this and smiled at her, nodding slightly. "Don't worry, I'll figure it out," he told them. The other two smiled knowingly. If anyone could help Jane, it was Kurt. He'd always been the one who had the best chance of getting through to her, after all.

"Oh, Weller, here you go," Patterson said, leaning her arm out the window with a key in her hand. "Your spare key. One of us will come by later with your car and your regular keys… the stuff you left in your locker yesterday." Before the ill-fated op had begun, in other words. "Since you're _staying home_ for a few days…" Patterson reminded him. They were curious to see if he would actually stay home, knowing what a workaholic he was. However, this time there was no stubbornness in his face.

"Thanks, again," he said tiredly, taking the key. Exhaustion was finally hitting him as the adrenaline of the whole thing drained out of him, and he imagined that Jane must be feeling the same, but magnified significantly. In this instance, it paid to be the Assistant Director. Yes, he'd have to write a report, but he was going to do it from home.

"For everything," he added, looking from one of them to the other. It went without saying that they may have saved his life, and Jane's. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last, and he and Jane had done the same for the others more than once as well. That was just part of being a team. Smiling at them once more, they waved and then rolled up the window as he turned towards Jane.

Looking over at her, he saw that she was still looking at the ground. He took a slow step toward her, feeling a strange energy coming from her that hadn't been there earlier. Standing on her left, he slowly slipped his right arm around her waist to hold her up, feeling her lean against him slowly. Only a few seconds later, her arm came up around his back as well, again almost reluctantly. He held the crutches in his left hand, and started slowly toward his building as Zapata and Patterson watched them go.

Patterson sighed loudly, shaking her head. "Those two…" she murmured.

"As messed up as it is, this may have been what they needed," Zapata said, shifting the car into gear.

"I hope so," replied Patterson distractedly, still watching them as the car pulled back into traffic. "There's no one who deserves it more."

Zapata rolled her eyes at her friend's hopeless romanticism, but she didn't go so far as to disagree with her. If things could work out for those two, then good for them… but they certainly had a lot to deal with in order for that to happen. Only time would tell.

Slowly and carefully, they made their way inside and to the elevator. Jane couldn't help but think about so many other times that she'd been there before… And yet, it felt different this time than any of the others – and _not_ just because of her injury.

 _It is different_ , she told herself.

 _Is it? Is it really?_ she wondered. _How can you know?_

Kurt leaned forward to press the button, and the doors of the elevator closed. In seconds, he had leaned back against Jane, then down to gently kiss her on the top of her head, letting his face rest in her hair, inhaling the scent and simply appreciating the fact that they were both alive. As far as Jane was concerned, it seemed like a pretty perfectly timed sign if ever there had been one.

 _That's how_ , the voice in her head said triumphantly. _You can't tell me you_ _ **doubt**_ _that, do you?_

 _I don't know what I think,_ she replied tiredly in her head. All she knew was that she _wanted_ to believe it… and that she was so very _tired_.

He wanted to try to convince her to talk about whatever was wrong, but the elevator wasn't the right place, so he stayed quiet and waited. They were almost back to his apartment, after all. Even so, he reminded himself, if she didn't want to talk, he wasn't going to force her – no matter how much he _wanted_ her to talk to him.

His face remained leaned against her hair until the elevator dinged, and he looked up reluctantly as the doors opened. "Almost there," he murmured, despite the fact that she hadn't said a word in quite a while. It didn't matter. After what she'd been through, he didn't need her to tell him that he was not okay. He knew.

After what seemed like the longest walk down the hallway to his apartment door ever, they finally made it inside. He dropped the spare key on the kitchen counter as they walked past it slowly, as he steered her straight to the couch at the far end of the room. She leaned down and braced herself with her hands, lowering herself onto the couch and then looking relieved when she leaned back into the cushions. She'd forgotten how comfortable his couch was. It had been a while since she'd been there.

Once Jane was settled on the couch, he leaned her crutches against the wall nearby, out of the way but where she could get to them relatively easily if she needed to. Without a word, he sat down beside her, turned sideways to face her even though she was staring across the room, seeming unwilling to meet his eyes.

Watching her carefully, he felt time stretching out between them and wasn't sure how long he would be able to convince himself to wait.

 _Who am I kidding?_ he asked himself. He knew better than to think he could sit there and watch her suffer.

He was sitting on her right, and he picked up her right hand, holding it between both of his. His left hand sat underneath her palm, and the fingers on his right hand traced the ink lines on the back of her hand gently, hoping that it would be soothing. He watched as she closed her eyes, almost seeming to wince as though she was in pain.

"I'm not going away, if that's what you think," he said quietly. "Being back here and safe doesn't change anything." He watched as she tensed noticeably, trying to pull away and yet at the same time, appearing that she was fighting the feeling within herself, and wondered if he'd really been right. Of course, that wouldn't be the only problem, but if that was even part of it…

 _How could she even think that?_ he wondered.

 _Because it's happened before,_ the voice in his head replied simply. She needed you, and you pushed her as far away as humanly possible. He felt that pain in his chest again, the one that he got when he thought about how badly it had all gone wrong with Jane in the past. He looked down at his fingers, tracing paths on the back of her hand, and then back up at her. Leaning forward, he pressed his elbows into the couch between them, bringing her hand up to his face. After kissing the back of her hand gently, he pressed it against his cheek, his hand on top of hers, just watching her.

"Jane…" he said quietly, not knowing what else to say. He shook his head, feeling defeated by it all.

She was surprised at the pain she heard in his voice, and she decided to open her eyes. Looking back at him, which she'd been avoiding doing for quite some time, she was surprised at the sincerity she saw there, and at the same time, an exhaustion that seemed to match how she felt, as well. Not trusting herself to answer, she just nodded.

And then before she even realized it, the words were tumbling out. "You don't have to, you know," she said before he could decide how to reply.

"Don't have to what?" he asked, genuinely confused. But it was starting to make sense to him, the way she was acting and what he knew about her slowly coming together. "Wait, you think… You think I regret something between us? You mean what happened… back there today?"

It suddenly all made sense. "I told you that I would never…" he hesitated, but knew that he needed to be direct. "I would never kiss you just to distract you… And I meant it, okay?" He saw her look away, and he stared at her in bewilderment.

 _She_ _ **really**_ _thought that?_

 _Apparently so… at least on some level. Or she was_ _ **afraid**_ _that that's what it was._

"The _only_ thing I regret, is that I let so many things come between us for so long," he said insistently, staring at her, willing her to look at him. "I regret that our third kiss didn't happen a long time ago. But I'm glad it finally did."

Waiting for her reaction was agony, and he still wasn't 100% sure that that was what she was thinking, but he forced himself to stop and just watch her, waiting for her reaction. It took a few minutes, but when she finally did look back up at him, it was as if she was searching for something in his face.

The thing she noticed most when she looked up was that he looked so worried. Hesitantly at first, but then less so as she moved, she turned to face him, biting her lip nervously.

 _How could you possibly be worried about this, with Kurt of all people?_ she asked herself. Of course, at the same time she knew that to a certain extent, it was precisely _because_ it was Kurt that was the reason she was so worried. There was simply _so much_ between them, after all, both the good and the… _complicated_. Or maybe it was _all_ complicated, even the good. She didn't even know anymore.

Sitting there facing him, unable to look away now that she'd finally forced herself to look at him, she honestly didn't know what to do next. She'd been operating mainly on intuition for as long as she'd been Jane, but suddenly even that had deserted her. She didn't trust herself to know what to do this time.

His words were sweet, and she felt her chest ache in confusion. Somehow she was feeling everything at once, not knowing how to separate one feeling from another, which only magnified each of them. And then just like that, she felt herself leaning forward as if something was pulling her toward him, not stopping until her forehead rested on his right shoulder. His arm immediately wrapped around her left side, and a few seconds later she felt his other hand let go of her hand, which he'd been holding against his cheek, so that both of his arms could wrap around her.

He was surprised when her hand remained on his cheek even though he was no longer holding it there. It had been his expectation that her hand would have fallen back down almost as quickly as his had let go. When it didn't, however, he felt hopeful. Maybe he _was_ getting through to her.

"Are you sure?" she asked. She sounded small and worried, not at all like what he'd expect from such a fearless woman as the Jane he knew.

The words popped into his head effortlessly, and he decided not to censor them. After all, he decided, he may as well let them redeem themselves.

"More than anything," he said near her ear. He felt her reaction instantly. It was something between a shudder and a nervous laugh, and his right hand moved steadily but gently up to the top of her back, up her neck and into her hair, rubbing small circles against her scalp. Then, sounding amused with himself, he added, "Ironically, I just couldn't see just how obvious it all should have been to me all along until we were trapped in absolute darkness," he told her. She had to sit back then, because as hard as she was trying to process what he was saying, she was having trouble letting the words sink in.

Her fingers, still fanning back and forth on his cheek, seemed to be soothing _both_ of them. It was only then that she glanced at them, realizing that she'd held them there all on her own. He smiled and leaned against her hand, turning his head just enough to kiss her palm right in the center, before turning back to look at her, that smile that he had only ever had for her filling his face.

And then, as if to prove that what he'd just said was true, that it _hadn't_ just been about being in the dark or about distracting her from her demons, he leaned forward the short distance between them, stopping suddenly just before he kissed her.

Not wanting there to be any mistake about _why_ he was doing what he was doing, he smiled, and then said, "To be clear, I do not want to distract you from anything, and I'm not trying to convince you of anything… except possibly of how much I love you." If he wasn't so close, he would have seen her eyes widen slightly in surprise, but he had a feeling he knew what the look on her face was even though he couldn't see it from his angle.

Without waiting for her to answer, he moved as slowly as he could, leaning toward her. Maybe the eye contact had been what was missing last time, because it felt different, and even better than it had last time, in the dark. Granted, it also probably helped that their lives weren't in danger as well. When he kissed her that time, it almost felt to him like he was moving in slow motion – not that that was a problem, because he was perfectly happy with making that moment last longer. The longer the better, as far as he was concerned.

She swore that this time, his lips felt even softer than they had before. He was trying to prove a point, she knew, and at that moment, as he kissed her again, she wondered how she could have doubted his sincerity in the first place.

 _I should have known…_ she thought as her mind ceased to be able to function properly.

He leaned back from her, finally, opening his eyes to look worriedly into hers once again. But hers were still closed, he noticed first. The other thing he noticed was a smile on her face, however, and when her eyes did finally blink open, slowly, she suddenly looked more like the Jane he knew. Exhausted, yes, but more like herself and less… haunted, for lack of a better word.

"Okay," she whispered, and the next thing he noticed was that she was no longer tense, no longer seeming to lean both towards him and away from him at the same time. Her thumb swiped across the scruff on his cheek once again before her hand slowly fell back down, so that she could shift her weight to lean into him. While he missed her hand's warmth on his cheek, the light coming back into her eyes was worth it.

Reaching for the pillow at the end of the couch, she laid it down flat and then scooted slightly towards it, turning so that she could lay her head down onto it slowly. Her legs were still angled awkwardly towards the floor, and without giving it a second thought he reached under her knees just like he'd done earlier when he'd picked her up, pulled them up onto the couch as he lifted his own legs out of the way onto the couch at the same angle. He shifted himself as well, so that he way lying behind her on his left side, his head propped up on his elbow so that he could look down at her, lying in front of him. As he shifted that way, she leaned back against his chest without a word.

Her head turned back to look at him then, an apologetic smile on her face. "Sorry," she whispered. "I'm a little tired."

"This is probably the last thing you should ever be sorry for," he said with a smile, pushing her hair back from her face and then running the back of his finger along her cheek slowly. "I'm certainly not." She smiled back up at him happily, blushing just a little. "We can go lay down in the other room, if you want…" he said hesitantly. He had no desire to move just then, though objectively he knew that the bed would probably be more comfortable for both of them. At the same time, he was very conscious of saying 'the other room' and not 'the bedroom,' because… well… he didn't want anything to spoil that moment, including accidentally making things awkward.

But she shook her head, smiling up at him. "This is perfect," she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. He knew that they both needed a shower, and that brushing their teeth was probably a good idea, but decided that even those basic things could wait. After all, what better way to celebrate that they were alive than this?

He lowered his head onto the pillow, directly behind hers, leaning his forehead into her hair. His right arm reached over her hesitantly, wanting to hold onto her to keep her close, and in seconds her hand had found his, her fingers threaded through the spaces between his perfectly, as if they'd been made to fit there. She sighed happily, and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"What's so funny?" she asked him, turning her head slightly in his direction, not succeeding in turning far enough to see him, only in pressing her hair further into his face. He chuckled again, kissing the back of her head.

"Nothing's funny," he said. "I'm just… happy. Happier than I can remember ever being before."

"Me, too," she grinned. But then her voice changed as she thought about what he'd said. "Not that _that_ means much coming from me, of course, because…" She shrugged, knowing that she didn't need to finish her sentence. _Because I don't remember that much_. Whereas not long ago she would have avoided his eyes then, suddenly it felt important to her to do just the opposite. She turned far enough onto her back that she could look at him, leaning back on the pillow and staring up at him, feeling strangely as though she was falling, even though she was lying still on the couch. As she watched, his expression change to concern.

"That's where you're wrong," he said sincerely. "You being happy means _everything._ " As she looked up at him in confusion, he couldn't help but smile.

 _How could she be so smart, so good at everything, and yet still not understand?_

"Everything… To _me_ ," he added, seeing that she still looked confused.

It wasn't the way she'd meant it when she'd implied that coming from her, being happier than ever before didn't mean much, and he knew it… but he didn't care. He also didn't care that his reply had sounded cheesy. It was the truth. He'd spent a lot of time – far too much – not even admitting these things to _himself_ , must less to her, and that needed to change. If he wanted her to stop doubting this – whatever it was between them – then he needed to give her reasons not to second guess it… _any_ of it.

She shifted all the way onto her back then, slowly reaching both of her hands up onto his cheeks, the way she had back when they'd been stuck in the dark. Her thumbs fanned across his cheeks the same way, and then, to his surprise, he watched as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The smile on her face was still there though, and he couldn't help but think he felt her relaxing simply from that contact. He knew that _he_ was feeling better. Without giving it another thought, he leaned down slowly towards her, feeling like he was being pulled by a magnetic force – or was it Jane that was pulling him? He honestly didn't know which of them it was, or whether it was an outside force, that was pulling him in to kiss her again. Her hands didn't leave his cheeks the whole time. If anything, they held him in place.

When he finally leaned back, reluctantly, her hands finally fell from his cheeks again as well, and she opened her eyes to smile at him. There was wonder on his face that she didn't think she'd ever seen there before. "Sorry, I couldn't help myself," he shrugged.

"What were you saying before? About something being the _last_ thing I should be sorry for? That goes for you, too," she said quietly. "I'm not sorry that you keep kissing me. Quite the opposite, actually." Her eyelids were trying to close, but she was fighting it valiantly.

He leaned down to kiss her forehead. "You're tired," he said tenderly. "Go to sleep now. I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

"No," she said, looking frustrated, "I don't…"

"I know you don't want to," he said, running his hand over her hair. "And I wish I could stop you from having nightmares." She smiled at him weakly, her eyelids drooping. "But you need to sleep, and I'm going to be right here. Okay?" he asked insistently.

She sighed tiredly. "Okay," she replied simply, turning back onto her side, and leaning against him. His arm tightened around her slightly, careful to pull too tight, since they were both bruised from the ordeal of the past few days. This feeling of closeness was a sensation that she wasn't sure she would ever get enough of, and certainly not anytime soon. In less than a minute, she felt herself give in to sleep, her last thought being that surely, she must be dreaming. She'd had this kind of dream before, long ago, and she could only hope that she wasn't going to wake up to find that it had been just that – a dream – like she used to.

As tired as he also was, Kurt had thought he'd fall asleep right away. Somehow, however, he ended up lying awake there behind Jane, his brain too full to let him sleep. It wasn't too long after she fell asleep, he didn't think, before she stiffened, beginning to twitch in agitation, though she wasn't actually awake. Picking his head up, he spoke directly in her ear. "Jane," he whispered, "Jane, you're safe. It's okay." He squeezed her hand tightly, pulling her closer to him. After that she seemed to relax again, and he decided that whatever was happening in her dream had stopped happening, at least for now.

Just a little bit of light from the streetlights outside came in from the window over his shoulder, and he looked at the back of her neck just in front of him, leaning forward to kiss the very top point of the oil derrick tattoo that stuck out above the neckline of her shirt. He finally felt himself getting tired, and he leaned his forehead against the back of her head again.

 _I will never get tired of his,_ he thought, just before he fell asleep.


	5. Worth the Wait

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)**_

 _A/N: This chapter is almost completely fluff, and I am not sorry. And it **is** the last chapter._

The next thing Jane was conscious of, she felt herself pitching forward, _hard_ , and the feeling that she was falling. She flung out her arms to stop herself, to grab on to something, _anything_ , not remembering where she was but only knowing that there had to be something that could stop this feeling of falling into nothingness. Her hand met the coffee table in less than half a second, but she didn't know what it was, only that it was something hard and close by. For a second she thought she was back in that dark cell again, or the black site, and panic overtook her.

Except that in the _next_ second, when she didn't hit the floor, and she opened her eyes to find fuzzy, dim light around her, she began to realize that whatever had scared her so badly had been a dream. Yes, she'd been falling for a fraction of a second, but then, even though he'd been asleep, Kurt's reflexes had kicked in and he'd been at least awake enough to catch her before she'd been able to tumble off the couch, onto the floor. Now, in the seconds that followed, Jane lay on the couch, eyes wide open, fear still coursing through her as she struggled to catch her breath, Kurt's arm tightly around the middle of her. He was still waking up, realizing exactly what had just happened there in front of him.

The first thing he registered, after pulling Jane back from nearly falling on the floor, was that even though he was holding on tightly to her, pressing her firmly against his chest, she was rigid, as if she thought that there was still a chance that she would fall. He nuzzled his face against the back of her head, then worked his cheek slowly to the side against hers, so that he could speak more directly into her ear.

"Ssssshhhh, hey," he whispered. "It's okay. I got you." He could feel her rapid heartbeat and how hard she was breathing, and his heart ached to be able to do something about it. He stayed just like that for a few seconds, realizing that it was time to do something he probably should have done earlier, but hadn't thought about the possibility that she'd pitch forward in her sleep. Slowly and carefully, he began to sit up behind her, moving her legs carefully as he swung his gradually to the floor.

She knew that she was safe by the time she heard his voice in her ear, but she lay there, breathing hard, trying to clear her mind. The nightmare she'd had hadn't been much of a surprise – some of her past demons mixed with the newest one to form a new form of nightly terror, which would probably now haunt her for some time to come… Though he might not be able to tell, at that moment, the only thing holding her together was Kurt's arm around her tightly, and the sound of his voice. Without those two things, she may have simply fallen apart. Or, at least that was how she felt.

Suddenly, she felt him shifting, and just as quickly she realized that he was no longer laying behind her. While she wouldn't have admitted it, stubborn as she was even at that moment, she missed the contact with him right away. She only had a few seconds to feel that way, however, before she felt herself begin to shift as well, and she turned in surprise to see what was happening.

 _I should have insisted,_ he was telling himself as he picked her up, once again threading one arm under her knees and the other lifting her from behind her back. He stood up all the way and looked down at a very sleepy, scared and quite surprised Jane, who he was now holding up in his arms once again.

"Since there's no guarantee that that won't happen again, and I don't want you ending up on the floor or banging your already _very_ bruised face on the coffee table, or both, we're going to go and sleep in the bed," he told her. It was no longer phrased as a question. She was fairly sure that they were going to _his_ bed, together, just based on the way he'd worded his sentence. Even that same sentence earlier that evening might have made her feel awkward, but now, in the middle of the night, when she was already tired and scared and she could admit that all she wanted was to stay close to him, it didn't faze her whatsoever.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Shall we make a bathroom stop on the way?" he asked in a gentler tone before he started walking, putting his foot up on the couch and resting her weight on his knee while he waited for her answer.

"Probably a good idea," she mumbled, though her head was leaned heavily against his collar bone and she didn't like the idea of him putting her down at all. Otherwise, at some point in the next few hours she'd have to hop there herself, which was less than ideal.

"I thought so," he replied, kissing her forehead and then shifting slightly, pulling her tighter so that he could put his foot back down on the floor and turn to begin walking towards the bathroom. At the doorway, he let her down slowly and she hopped inside. "There's a spare toothbrush in the left drawer, if you want," he told her just before pulling the door closed behind her. Turning to lean his head back against the wall behind him, he sighed tiredly. If anyone had told him that this was where he'd have been only a few days ago, he would have denied that anything like this could happen. And yet, here he was. Here _they_ were. It wasn't perfect, but compared to the polite coworkers they'd been lately, though slowly growing closer, well… he preferred this.

A few minutes later, the door opened and a sleepy looking Jane hopped back through the doorway, only to be scooped up by Kurt once again. "You know you didn't have to do that," she told him. "I could have made it."

Smiling down at her, he shook his head. "Just because you could have doesn't mean you should have to," he told her sincerely, his voice still a little raspy from tiredness. "Besides, maybe I'm just being selfish and this is for _me_ … because I kind of _like_ holding onto you like this."

She smiled, shaking her head at him and laying her head back against his collarbone where it had been as he began walking again. Slowing down to go through the bedroom doorway sideways, they had reached their destination in seconds, and Kurt pulled the covers back on the bed as well as he could with the hand that was under Jane's knees, then leaned as far forwards as he could to deposit her as close to the center of the bed as possible.

Walking around the bed to his dresser, he pulled out one of his larger clean t-shirts, closing the drawer and then setting it on the bed beside her.

"If you'd rather have something else to sleep in…" he said, smiling enough that she could see that he felt slightly awkward about making the suggestion. "Make yourself comfortable," he told her, "I'll be right back." Taking the chance to duck into the bathroom himself, he was back in under two minutes, only to find Jane, now wearing his t-shirt, which she seemed to be swimming in, sitting with the blankets pulled up over her legs. However, she looked anything but comfortable. Her legs were pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them tightly. Seeing her sitting like that, so rigidly, made him once again wish that he could simply say or do something that would fix this for her. However, he knew that he was doing his best, and reminded himself that he _was_ getting through to her, and that that would have to be enough.

Walking back around the bed to his dresser, where he saw the pile of her clothes that she'd left beside the bed, he pulled out another t-shirt. Facing away from her, he pulled off the t-shirt that he was wearing and exchanged it for the clean one, pulling it down over him tiredly, and only then remembering that he was sore, too, as he stretched muscles that didn't want to be stretched. He pulled off his jeans as well, tossing both garments in the small hamper in the corner of the room. Usually he just slept in his boxers, but he'd added the t-shirt for Jane's benefit, not wanting to make her feel awkward for any reason. As far as pants went… well, hers were on the floor with her shirt, so his tired brain decided that that was enough of a sign of her comfort level with the situation.

He made his way back to the other side of the bed, closer to the door, which Jane was facing slightly more towards. Sitting down in front of her, he saw her look at him, but while her eyes followed him, her expression didn't change. Her face was tight, as was her posture, and once again he couldn't help but think that she looked exhausted. She also looked like she had no intention of going back to sleep anytime soon. Smiling at her gently, he scooted himself closer to her.

Hunched as far forward as she was, it was relatively easy to scoot himself behind her in the center of the bed. She tensed even more as he did, turning slightly to see what he was doing. "Tell me if you want me to back away, or stop," he said in a soft voice, resting his hands gently on her shoulders and just holding them there.

To this she replied quietly, "Okay, I mean… _No…_ I mean…" Now she smiled a little bit, though it took some effort. "I don't, but if I do, I will."

He moved until his face was beside hers, kissing her cheek and then leaning back just enough to begin rubbing her shoulders, trying to ease the tension out of them. It only took him a few seconds, however, to realize that what he was trying to accomplish would have been easier if she'd still been wearing her own tank top instead of his oversized – on her, anyway – t-shirt. Even so, he already felt her beginning to relax, even though her arms were still wrapped tightly around her knees in front of her.

Maybe it was the lateness of the hour that made him just a little bolder than usual – or was this considered early, not late? It was almost 2:30 am, so it could have been considered either, really… Alternatively, maybe it was everything they'd been through that day already, or some combination of those, or something else, but, unsatisfied with the back rub she was getting through the fabric of his shirt, he slipped his hands down onto her arms, where the ends of the sleeves sat, midway between her elbows and her shoulders, and slowly slid his hands most of the way inside the sleeves, pushing the fabric back up so that his fingers were once again on her shoulders, with the fabric of his shirt mostly out of the way.

To his surprise, she didn't tense at all, even for a second, when he did that. Actually, when his hands grasped her bare shoulders, he swore he felt the tense knot that she'd pulled herself into actually begin to _loosen_. This was good news, of course, since that had been the outcome he'd hoped for. He continued to knead her shoulders, slowly increasing the pressure he used, and finding that not only was she beginning to relax, but he felt himself getting sleepier and sleepier as well.

When she felt his fingers slide inside the sleeves of her shirt, she was surprised when it didn't bother her. Logically, she would have thought they she would have felt uncomfortable, but instead, she felt nothing but relief. Then again, his touch had always been soothing to her, so perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise, after all… All she knew was that she felt the tension in her left over from her nightmare begin to dissipate.

At some point not too much after that, she was sitting with her knees bent loosely in front of her, her arms around them but not tightly whatsoever. She just hadn't put them down all the way yet, but it was only a matter of another minute or so before she did just that. She wondered silently how he had this effect on her, and then realized that that thought was something that he might like to hear out loud. After all, she thought, the least she could do was to tell him how much his actions meant to her. It was the truth.

So she considered what she should say for a few seconds, before deciding to keep it simple. She was feeling very sleepy again, despite having told herself that she was done sleeping for the night. "How do you do it?" she asked him quietly, turning her head in his direction, though not far enough around to be able to see him.

"Do what?" he asked, leaning forward so that he could _almost_ see her face from the side.

She considered how to explain it, but most of it was just vague, fuzzy thoughts she had when she thought of him. So she went with the only words that came to mind. "You always just… know what to do to fix things." His hands paused in their work, resting against her skin, and he leaned forward just enough to lean down and kiss the skin just inside the neck of the shirt she was wearing, behind her collarbone where her neck and shoulders met.

"Of course, I didn't say that to make you stop," she told him with a smile, turning the rest of the way around. Looking into his eyes, she suddenly realized how tired he looked. As much as she didn't want him to stop what he was doing, she knew that she needed to at least let _him_ sleep. Doing anything else seemed cruel just then. "But you look exhausted. I think it's time you went back to sleep," she told him.

"And what about you?" he asked. "I could say the same thing about you." She just shrugged, looking away, and she felt disappointment flood her as his hands moved back down from her shoulders, to her arms, and back out of the sleeves of the shirt of his that she was wearing. He moved slowly, so that he was no longer sitting behind her, but now lying on his right side, on her left and facing her, and looking up at her with concern. She looked back down at him only reluctantly, after feeling him watching her, and was surprised to see the warmth of the smile that looked back up at her.

"You need sleep, too, but I can't force you, and I know that," he told her quietly. "And I understand why you don't want to sleep." He spoke slowly, trying to choose his words carefully. "I just wish I could fix it for you." His left hand moved to where her hands were wrapped loosely around her legs, outside of the blanket, taking her left hand gently in his, finding that he met no resistance from her. "But I also know that I will sleep better if you lay down here with me. And I hope that you know that you're safe here… Obviously I know better than to promise that nothing can hurt you, but I'd do anything in my power to stop it from happening. For whatever that's worth."

She smiled slowly, and maybe a little sadly, too, he thought. All things considered, it made sense – her hesitation. It was _all_ complicated. It always had been, and probably always would be. Or maybe it just felt that way.

"But I meant what I said before," he said, pausing slightly and looking up at her. "When I said that I love you." He'd slipped it in just before he'd kissed her, earlier, which had effectively ended all conversation. She hadn't forgotten, but afterwards she'd almost wondered if it had slipped out by accident, or if she'd maybe imagined it. Now it was clear that it hadn't, which both gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling and simultaneously terrified her.

Despite the fact that they scared her, those were apparently the words that did the trick to bring her out of her shell, however, because she finally began moving slowly, avoiding his eyes as she shifted herself to lie down beside him. She moved close enough to snuggle against him, finally letting herself relax. Only once their faces were inches apart did she finally look back up into his, and he could see the hesitation there, mixed with so many other things.

She stared into his eyes for more than just a few seconds, feeling the words forming in her head but not quite finding their way to her mouth. He smiled back at her, fairly sure that he was watching the wheels in her head turning, and reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ears. He only hoped that she believed him when he said it… though if she didn't, really, it shouldn't surprise him too much. After all, with everything that had happened, she had every reason to doubt him. But he promised himself that he'd convince her.

But her words surprised him. "I love you, too," she told him softly. "I guess… I always have… I just," she paused for a second, thinking, then continued. "I just didn't know what the feeling _was_ … or what I was supposed to do with it."

Kurt couldn't help but smile, because it was so very Jane. Come to think of it, she'd summed up _his_ feelings as well. Never mind that he had far more memories and far more experience to draw from. He hadn't been any more clued in that she had. Zapata had been right, that day back in Michigan when she'd tried to spell it out for him.

Smiling back at her, he laid his left arm across her back, gently tugging her closer. "Time to go back to sleep," he told her. It wasn't a question. She was hesitant, but not as terrified as she had been earlier. Somehow, things looked better there, beside him. And really, as much as she usually did try to simply avoid sleep, laying here next to him it seemed to make sense that that technique really wasn't going to work. It would catch up with her eventually, she reasoned, and there was nowhere she'd rather be when it did.

Out of habit, she fought to keep her eyelids open, and had to actively remind herself that it was okay to close them. His reminder helped, too.

"I'll see you in the morning. Right here. Okay? Unless you're planning to go somewhere…" he said tiredly, his smile still playful.

"I've never wanted to _not_ go anywhere more," she told him, and was rewarded with his smile.

"Good night, Jane," he whispered.

"Good night," she replied, keeping her eyes open long enough to see his close, but no longer.

Ideally, the next time they woke up it would have been much later, after at least five or so more hours sleep, if not far more. However, that was not meant to be that night.

Just before 4:00 am, Kurt woke up to Jane rolling away from him, almost throwing herself backwards as if she needed to escape from something dangerous. Having been asleep, he didn't quite catch her that time, and later he would applaud the decision he'd made to move them off of the couch. Surely, she would have fallen off and ended up on the floor _that_ time, if he hadn't. She was moving from side to side widely, muttering things that he couldn't make out but that were punctuated by a lot of the word "no," and seemed to involve pushing his hands away from her whenever he tried to hold onto her.

 _I just need to wake her up_ , he thought with increasing desperation. He was saying her name over and over, to what seemed like no avail. He didn't want to restrain her, because he didn't want to make things worse, but it was hard to think of how else to get her to stop thrashing around. "Jane," he said, loudly and emphatically, " _Jane_ , wake up. Come on, it's just me." There was a hint of desperation in his voice. He hated to see her so obviously scared of something in her mind, and he knew that being awake, while it would bring her relief, would also be painful in a different way, depending on how much of her dream she remembered.

She was laying on her back, moving constantly. He leaned over her the best he could, gently grabbing first her left hand with his right, and then her right with his left, holding them above her against the bed, not tightly, but firmly enough that she couldn't immediately slip them back out of his grasp. "Jane, come on, come back to me," he said in the most soothing voice he could manage. He felt a hint of desperation seeping into his voice. It was so hard to see her like this, after all.

He noticed the second that she stopped fighting him and began waking up. In one way she relaxed, stopped struggling, and in another way she seemed to tense even more. "Hey," he whispered, glad that she'd finally escaped from the dream, but not wanting her first waking thought to be fearful. "It's okay. It was just a bad dream." She was breathing as though she'd just run a marathon, unable to catch her breath. It was only when she opened her eyes and looked at him, tears suddenly leaking out of the corners, that he realized that he was holding himself up nearly directly above her, his hands still holding hers against the bed and their faces only inches apart.

Even as the tears leaked from her eyes and she struggled to catch her breath, she couldn't help but be grateful that Kurt was there, as close as he was. She stared into his eyes, getting lost in them, and trying to center herself. She'd had plenty of nightmares in the past – though not too many recently – and she knew from experience that waking up with him there, that close, was much better than waking up and being alone. Her tears were from fear, but also from relief, and it seemed important to tell him that. At that moment, however, she couldn't quite form those, or any other, words, only stare into his eyes as she fought to catch her breath.

He was just about to loosen his grasp on her hands and move back, feeling slightly self-conscious about the position that he was in, leaning over her like that. He didn't want her to think that he intended to take advantage of the situation… But before he could move, he felt her hands tighten their grip on his, and saw her eyes close again, as the flow of tears from the corners of her eyes, even while they were closed, intensified.

"Hey," he whispered, the break in his voice revealing exactly how desperately he wanted to figure out what to say to make her stop crying. He knew his words were probably insufficient, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. "You're safe. It's okay. Alright? It's okay…" Her eyes were still closed and she nodded her head, but the tears continued to leak stubbornly from her eyes. He leaned up and kissed her forehead, then moved his face to her left cheek, the one closest to him. He brushed his cheek against hers gently, before whispering into her ear. "I've got you. Okay? No one and nothing is going to take you away from me. Not this time."

He thought he felt her nod her head slightly, but he couldn't he sure. That was okay, though. If she'd heard him, that was enough.

Her head was a confusing place just then. The emotions that were assaulting her were each fighting for dominance, and so far none of them were winning. Until, of course, she heard the words he'd whispered in her ear. While it wasn't immediate, she felt herself calming down slowly after that, still not quite able to reply but at least able to breathe less desperately.

Thinking about logistics quickly in his head, he realized that he should get himself onto the other side of her in order for what he wanted to do to work right. Leaning his head back from her, though he didn't want to, he found himself once again bracing himself on his elbows, looking down at her. Even when she was crying like this, she was beautiful.

Reminding himself of what he was trying to do, and that it would hopefully help her, he carefully shifted himself above her, "stepping" his legs over hers, brushing against hers in the process and remembering once again that both of them were sleeping without pants. Of course, it was a passing observation and not something to focus on just then, one that he made because he was reminded when his leg brushed against hers and he felt the softness of her skin.

Successfully on Jane's right side now, he slowly managed to disengage his hands from hers, where they had still been clutched against the bed. She looked up at him, now on the other side of her, in slight confusion. "Alright, come here," he told her, scooting himself towards her, now lying on his left side and pulling her towards him at the same angle, so that she gradually moved onto her left side as well. His left arm was threaded through the space under her neck, her left ear against the pillow below her head, and with the angle and the fact that she seemed so small there in front of him, his left hand could reach all the way across her to hold onto her right shoulder. His right arm was crossed tightly the other way over her, and he could feel her leaning back against him as hard as she could, her right hand on top of his left, squeezing hard.

"Just breathe, okay?" he whispered into her right ear, careful not to lean against the side of her face, which still looked uncomfortably puffy. Making sure that she didn't end up leaning on that side of her face had been his primary reason for changing to the other side of her – he had known that he wanted to hold onto her as tightly as possible.

When he told her to breathe, it still felt like there was a huge distance between them. It was like she was somewhere far away, and yet somehow he was whispering in her ear. It was strange, and yet… she liked it. She felt him pulling her tighter, and slowly the feeling of being far away from him began to fade as she let herself relax again. _Oh, there you are,_ she thought. _You're not far away after all._ She realized only then that he was holding her against him tightly, and she couldn't help but smile. Doing as he'd told her, she focused on breathing in and out.

He could feel her beginning to relax, and the tightness in his chest only then began to loosen. Even though he knew that it was just a bad dream she was having, her reaction was hard to watch. The fact that he couldn't jump in and fight off whatever was in her head _for_ her was perhaps the hardest thing for him to deal with. "Better?" he whispered near her ear, and then felt her nod her head, still not saying anything. "Good," he said, and she could hear him smiling.

"Thanks," she said, slightly breathlessly, pulling her right arm tighter. It overlapped both of his arms, which were wrapped tightly around her, her hand holding onto the back of his left arm just above his wrist, which happened to fall somewhere not far below her chin. The fear from her dream was slowly seeping out of her, replaced by exhaustion, relief, and, the strongest one… _love_. She didn't feel like she'd ever done anything to deserve something – _someone_ – so wonderful, but she wasn't going to question it. At least not this time.

"It's okay if you don't go back to sleep," he whispered from behind her, knowing that sleep was probably the thing she wanted to do least just then. "But stay right here with me, okay?" he asked.

She smiled weakly at his words, once again amazed at his astuteness. He was right, she _didn't_ want to go back to sleep. Not only was she wide awake, for one thing, and she didn't want to repeat the dream she'd just had, for another. Smiling to herself, she felt warmth spread through her that slowly but surely began to push out the tension left over from her nightmare. When he felt her nod her head against him, he leaned forward and kissed the back of her head.

"If I fall back to sleep, I'm sorry," he whispered then, and she couldn't help but chuckle softly to herself.

"Go back to sleep," she whispered, turning her head slightly in his direction, only getting far enough that her cheek was even with his mouth instead of her ear. "You deserve it. Being Superman takes a lot of energy. I have to wonder what's more exhausting, saving the world, or saving me."

He smiled at her compliment, even though he thought it to be a gross exaggeration. "You, definitely," he replied playfully, which made her laugh out loud. She let go of his arm in front of her for a second and reached back awkwardly, because of the angle, pretending to punch him – though, afraid to accidentally hit a spot where he was actually injured, stopping short of actually punching him even lightly – before replacing her hand on his arm, pulling it tightly once again.

"Watch it," she told him, unable to keep a straight face.

"I intend to," he told her. "Or, you, mostly."

"Haha," she whispered.

"Didn't you hear? I'm hilarious," he assured her with a grin.

"You may have been misinformed," she told him, still leaning back in his direction. "Are you sure your source is reliable?" She felt him chuckling, felt it rumble in his chest as she leaned back against him, thoughts of her nightmare now quickly fading. He kissed her cheek gently, so lightly that it almost didn't make contact, since this was the side on which she'd been hit in the face. He nuzzled her cheek just as gently with his nose, leaning his forehead against the side of her head behind her temple.

When she sighed contentedly, he didn't need any more words to know that she was okay. More than okay, really. That was the sigh of someone who was truly happy. He knew it, because he felt it as well. However much baggage they still had, at that moment it didn't matter. It wasn't clear who fell asleep first after that, only that there were no more nightmares that night.

The next time he woke up, it wasn't because Jane was having a nightmare. On the contrary, she was sleeping peacefully beside him. Well, _on_ him was probably a more apt description. It seemed that in his sleep, he'd rolled onto his back, tugging her along with him. She was sleeping draped mostly over him, her head on his chest – the right side of which was against him. He'd been trying to avoid having her sleep that way for the sake of her poor, bruised face, but oh well, he wasn't going to disturb her now. Her left arm was draped across him, and the rest of their limbs were tangled up together. He didn't dare move any part of him that would potentially jar her, which basically left only his head free. Turning to look at the clock, he saw that it was just after 9:00 am this time.

 _A much more civilized time, especially after being up half the night,_ he thought. Looking back down at her, sleeping soundly, he closed his eyes and drank in this feeling. It was a strange thing, this _happiness_ that he'd heard so much about.

 _That's not_ _ **just**_ _happiness,_ the voice in his head interjected. _It's even more powerful than that. What you're feeling is love, too_.

He realized that he was smiling then. _Lucky me,_ he thought, perfectly content to lie there and simply feel it, not moving a muscle.

Even without opening his eyes, he knew the moment Jane started waking up. Even before she actually moved, he felt her muscles contract slowly against him, probably taking a few seconds to figure out where she was. His eyes were still closed, the smile still on his face.

Moving just enough to look up at him, she saw the smile on his face and guessed that he was awake. After all, it was really late for either of them to still be sleeping. "Good morning," she whispered, looking up at him but otherwise not moving. "You awake up there?"

"Mmmmm…. Yes, just enjoying exactly where I am right now. I saw no reason to move," he replied, his smile intensifying but his eyes remaining closed.

She felt her stomach flip flopping a little bit, her cheeks growing warm as she slowly realized only how close they were, that's she'd been sleeping on top of him and that their bare legs were tangled together… and that he had liked it enough not to want to move. When she slowly began to shift, she felt his arms suddenly holding onto her in the middle of her back.

"You're good where you are," he assured her. "No moving allowed."

The slight awkwardness she had felt when she'd realized how close they were immediately melted into the warm glow of happiness that she was already feeling, just intensifying it. "Oh yeah? For how long?" she asked him curiously.

"Hmmmm…" he mused. "I haven't decided yet."

"But we'll move eventually, right?" she asked curiously. "I mean, we're going to get hungry at some point. Actually, I'm surprised you're not hungry already." She felt his chest rumble with a quiet chuckle beneath her, and she couldn't help but smile, letting her eyes fall closed again and setting her head back down just where it had been when she'd woken up. She listened to his heartbeat, feeling like her heart might burst with happiness.

"If I was up, I'd eat," he replied with a shrug that she felt instead of saw. "But I'd rather be right here, with you." After a pause he added, "Until you decide that _you're_ hungry, and then I can make some breakfast." He was rewarded for his offer with her own soft chuckle, which he felt just as well as she'd felt his.

Lying there with her eyes closed, she began to feel a light sensation against the skin of her left hand, which moved up her arm after only a few seconds. Opening her eyes, she looked up at Kurt once again and smiled. His fingertips were ghosting lightly over the ink lines of her tattoos, following them every which way, looping back around and around as they traveled up her arm.

At first she smiled at the sensation, but her eyes followed his fingers as they continued, and her expression changed.

He was confused to notice that it wasn't long after she'd smiled at him, and he'd assumed that she liked what he was doing, that her smile disappeared. Her eyes were still following him, but it was clear that something was bothering her. She glanced back down at her ink-covered arm, then once again at his fingers, which had almost stopped moving, before settling on his face once again.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, his fingers halting their movement and lying flat against the skin of her arm.

"No," she replied quietly, shaking her head against him. "It's not that. I…" Her eyes darted back down to her arm, and he saw her expression darken.

"You don't see it, do you?" he asked her, wonder filling his voice.

Confused, she looked back up at him once again. "See what?"

"How beautiful you are," he replied, watching her carefully.

Her lips curved into a smile, but the rest of her face, especially her eyes, were sad, and she looked away, back down at the same arm she'd already been frowning at so intensely. He was right, she didn't see it. Once in a while, depending on the situation and her mood, she felt like some kind of monster – though less often now than she used to. But beautiful? That felt like something that other people were. She knew that she certainly attracted a lot of attention, but it didn't usually feel like the positive kind.

Besides, the people in her life consisted mainly of those with the FBI, and complete strangers. The people associated with the FBI were mainly used to her – though even some of the junior agents in other departments sometimes gave her looks that betrayed their nervousness around her. Complete strangers, on the other hand. Well, they mostly seemed to fall into two categories.

The first group was those who were some degree of shocked by her appearance, which could range anywhere between obviously uncomfortable and horrified, depending on the person. The other group were the few who were attracted by her tattoos, but more because of what they thought they said about her as a person. Those people tended to look at her in ways that made her intensely uncomfortable, as if they knew a dirty secret about her that others didn't, and they were already undressing her with their eyes. Either way, if they couldn't look her in the eyes as if she was simply anyone else, she had learned to ignore them – though even now, it wasn't necessarily easy.

But beautiful? No, she could honestly say that she'd never considered the possibility.

"You will, though," he told her quietly, leaving it at that. He was relieved to see that her expression lightened slightly then. She glanced back at him tentatively, as if she was afraid to believe it, but she wanted to. He resumed tracing the ink lines on her arm, and he watched her close her eyes, smiling once again.

 _I could get used to this,_ she told herself.

They laid there just like that for a while, denying the existence of reality, Kurt watching her but Jane keeping her eyes closed, just focusing on the way she felt. After all, she didn't really have a memory of being perfectly and completely happy, and she wanted to savor it as long as she could. Besides, he'd moved his left hand to her hair, where his fingers trailed lazily along her scalp, and between the two, she didn't think she could have moved if she'd wanted to. Which she decidedly _didn't_ , of course.

She had lost all sense of time when, sometime later, both of his hands stilled, though they maintained contact with her, and she heard his voice break through the blissful silence. "How are you feeling?"

Without opening her eyes, she smiled up into the direction she knew that his face was. "Physically? Like I was dragged behind a bus, maybe…?" she replied. It was a funny response to hear, since it didn't match the smile on her face. "But otherwise… let's just say I didn't know that I could be this happy." When he leaned down and kissed her forehead, the buzz in her head that had already been there intensified. It was as if there was simply no end to the good feelings, and she was quickly becoming addicted to them.

"I think that's the perfect description of it," he replied. "And I think maybe we should get up now…" Before he finished his sentence, he felt her tense against him in protest. "So that I can make us something to eat, and we can get some painkillers, and wash those terribly dirty clothes from yesterday… so you have something to wear. _Not_ ," he added, "that I'm complaining about you not wearing pants."

She felt herself blushing a deep shade of pink, and she finally opened her eyes slowly, looking up at him to find him grinning at her. "I, uh, last night I guess I was, uh, upset by my nightmare and…" It felt out of character for her to simply have shed her pants when she was sleeping somewhere besides her own bed, _with someone else_ … but when it came down to it, Kurt was not just _someone_. On the contrary, he was the only one. Of course, if she hadn't been so tired and distraught, she probably would have just kept them on… but that ship had sailed. Besides, she could feel the skin of his legs against the skin of hers, and it was a nice feeling.

"Though, you know, pajamas are also acceptable next time, if that's what you want," he added, "I just don't have any that would fit you."

"Next time, huh?" she asked, wondering if he was really saying what she thought he was saying.

"Absolutely," he replied, watching her intently. "Unless you don't want to do this again, of course." He grinned at her, and she could tell that he knew that that wasn't the case.

"I don't even want to get up _now,_ " she replied quietly.

"I'll take that as positive," he told her, "but we really should get up." She sighed heavily, nodding, but not moving. "You should probably be the one to get up first, since you're on top of me," he told her, noting with amusement that when he pointed out her position in relation to him, she blushed slightly.

… _since you're on top of me_ , she heard him say, and felt her cheeks growing instantly warm once again. That simply wasn't something that she'd ever thought would come out of Kurt's mouth to her. She really, really didn't want to move.

Looking up at him with a smile, she was surprised when she felt his hands settle firmly on her sides, slightly above her waist, at the base of her ribs, and tug her up gently until her face was even with him. Looking into his eyes in amusement, she enjoyed the sudden closeness, their faces only a few inches apart.

"We need to get up," he told her, "but first, clearly I need to do something else."

"What's that?" she asked, wondering what he had in mind but not able to think all that clearly when they were so close together.

"This," he said simply, closing the distance between them and kissing her gently. The buzz in her head intensified, and there were no more thoughts of _anything_ at that moment, certainly not of getting up. Even after the kiss ended, she remained still, her nose and forehead pressed against his, her eyes still closed. At that moment, she felt so happy that her chest actually ached from the intensity of her feelings. She pulled her head back only very slowly and opened her eyes to look at him reluctantly. It was almost too much, and she had to remind herself to breathe.

"Now," he told her, bringing his right hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, her face still barely back far enough for them to focus on each other properly, "we get up. I know that you could skip several meals and probably not even notice," he said with a slightly disapproving look, "but we're going to break you of that habit."

" _We_ are?" she asked, grinning once again. It seemed that everything he said made her grin like an idiot. Or maybe it just felt that way.

"Yes," he told her emphatically. Leaning forward to kiss the tip of her nose quickly. "Now come on, let's get up."

It took a while, because Jane wasn't exactly cooperative about the whole getting up thing, but they did eventually find themselves out of bed. Kurt deposited all of Jane's dirty clothes into the washing machine, returning to the bedroom to where she was pushing herself to stand up from the bed on her good ankle. He was perfectly content for her to simply stay in his oversize t-shirt until her clothes were clean.

"Do you want, uh, a robe or something?" he asked her.

But to his surprise, she shook her head. Her cheeks slightly pink, she replied, "No, I'm fine."

Kurt, of course, also had no complaints about this. He helped her to one of the stools in the kitchen and got started making coffee, putting a steaming cup of it in front of her only a few minutes later, then excusing himself temporarily. When he emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, once again seeing her sitting on the stool at the end of the counter, he couldn't help but smile at the sight of her in his t-shirt, her legs bare.

"I'll handle breakfast, so why don't you take a shower?" he asked, coming to stand in front of her at the corner of the counter, so that she shifted in her chair to face him. He put two small pills in her hand and set a glass of water on the counter between them. Jane, not wanting to be shorter than she had to be compared to him, pushed herself out of her chair, standing up on her good ankle once again. Taking half a step back to give her space, he then rested his hands lightly on her waist while she swallowed the pills and he waited for her answer.

Lowering the glass slowly from in front of her face, she replied, "That sounds logical, but there's only one problem."

Tilting his head slightly sideways, he looked at her curiously. "What's that?" he asked.

"I like it right where I am too much to move," she told him.

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead yet again, letting his hands slip down over her hips so slightly that she almost didn't feel them there, and then let them fall back to his sides reluctantly. Forcing himself to take another half step back from her, as she balanced herself against the counter, he said, "There's more of that, don't worry."

"Of what?" she asked teasingly.

"Of… all of it," he told her, which made her smile so hard she wasn't entirely sure her face wasn't going to crack.

Fifteen minutes later, she was out of the shower, her hair damp and wearing the same t-shirt of his that she'd had on before, her legs still bare. He helped her back to the stool at the counter, where breakfast was waiting for them, sitting down on the stool beside her. Instead of facing the plate of food in front of him, however, he turned and faced her, watching her intently, as if he wanted to say something.

After settling herself on the stool, she looked back up and saw him watching her, so she turned to face him once again. "What's wrong?" she asked, slightly concerned. She wasn't sure what to make of the look on his face.

"Absolutely nothing," he said, almost in surprise, his expression still unclear to her. "I guess I was just thinking that I wish we'd been locked in together sooner."

She couldn't help but smile then. After all, she knew the feeling. It was easy to wonder if things would have happened between them much earlier if they'd been put in that situation before…

With a shrug, she said thoughtfully, "I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have worked the same way earlier." He was watching her so carefully that for a few seconds, she almost forgot what she was saying. "Maybe it had to happen the way it did… all of it." She shivered slightly at the thought of what _all of it_ had entailed, and the pain that they'd both gone through to get to where they now were. "But it doesn't really matter now, right? The important thing is that we're here _now_." He was nodding at her, watching her silently. "Besides, what we do… it's never certain. How many times have we had close calls, where we weren't sure we would make it?"

"Too many," he replied quietly.

"Exactly," she said, smiling slightly. "I guess we just have to enjoy what we have while we have it."

"Okay," he agreed, leaning forward to kiss her. She smiled in genuine surprise and more than a little delight at his interpretation of her words. That hadn't been what she meant, but she wasn't exactly going to argue.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked teasingly during a very brief break for air.

He kissed her again, then said, without actually leaning back from her, "Whatever you want." She laughed then, somehow managing to kiss him at the same time, slapping him playfully on the arm.

So _this_ was what had been waiting for them all this time. As they finally stopped to catch their breath, agreeing that they really _did_ need to eat the food that Kurt had cooked before it got cold and turning towards the counter, their shoulders rested against each other. He couldn't help feeling it again, that intense and surprising happiness that wasn't _just_ happiness, but love as well. As much as he loved kissing her, what he really loved was _her._ Everything about her.

So many things had stood in their way, and so many more roadblocks would undoubtedly be put there. They were bruised and battered, literally as well as metaphorically, and yet, there they were, stronger than ever. Despite everything, Jane couldn't help but feel the burden of the past begin to lift for the first time. After all, everything horrible thing that had happened to her was, at that moment, in the past, and this… whatever they decided to call it… it had been worth the wait.


End file.
